This past summer, kids turned to Roblox to protest the aggressive, violent escalation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Now, activists are using both Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto V roleplay to educate gamers on how to handle an IRL ICE raid.
As reported by both 404 Media and WIRED, a global gamer group called New Save Collective has been organizing special events in video games that mimic real-world ICE raids to help raise awareness and educate players about their rights. On November 20, the collective organized a GTA V event, which took place in the GTA Online RP servers and featured masked ICE agents stopping players and demanding they show identification.
On November 21, New Save Collective held a related event in the currently Simpsons-themed Fortnite, specifically in the “Delulu” mode, the only one that features proximity chat. It allowed players to meet each other in-game before practicing what to do if ICE approaches them in a real-life scenario. The role-playing event featured agents played by the Collective (which has recently partnered with other immigration advocacy groups like Immigrants Belong and Define American) attempting to detain and/or question “vulnerable” civilians, their chosen term for people most often targeted by ICE raids.
In clips shared with 404 Media, the agents reportedly urged other players, who were not the target of their search, to leave. “This does not concern you,” one said. A person responded with, “We’re allowed to record,” while the group of “civilians” closed in on the two agents, who were standing on top of a golf cart. The agents decide to “abandon the vehicle” and leave, during which a player yells, “Yeah, I threw a pizza at you!”
Obviously, this is nothing like how an ICE raid goes in the real world, but that’s the point—to allow gamers a chance to role-play what could be a very scary situation with relatively low stakes. An organizer told 404 Media that the goal of the space was less training for a potential ICE raid and more “to organize a community and build trust.”
Both ICE and the White House have repeatedly co-opted gaming to both promote their anti-immigrant propaganda and serve as potential recruitment spaces. The most recent example happened last month when official government Twitter accounts shared AI-generated images of Trump as Halo’s Master Chief and calls to “stop the Flood.” It’s heartening to see New Save Collective try and steal back some digital space from the alt-right. The “culture change organization” dedicated to humanizing immigrants, Define American, told Wired that, “Gaming wasn’t kind of a random genre that we chose. We’ve been tracking anti-immigrant myths and disinformation digitally for years.”
New Save Collective will hold more events throughout the rest of 2025, and told 404 Media the response thus far has been “overwhelmingly positive,” except for the people claiming to be ICE agents who have tried to join the Discord server.
