White House Gone to Far

By Marlene Ascencio, Photo Editor

@WhiteHouse/X The deportation video including the flight process.

On Feb. 18, in the afternoon, the White House posted an unusual and controversial video to X (formerly Twitter) regarding deportations. The 41-second video, which was captioned "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight," showed people being led onto a deportation flight filled with sounds of clanking chains and walking up metal stairs of the plane.

ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) videos are meant for videos to be filled with relaxing noises. They cause some individuals to feel a calm feeling. In the video, the noises were rather related to something serious and didn't invoke a calming feeling to those that viewed the video.

Many were outraged by the video and stated that it was not respectful and rather cruel. A majority of viewers felt the White House was making a joke out of something serious. Others went as far as to saying it was "beyond cruel." There were some others who simply couldn't help but think it was funny, like Senior Advisor to the President Elon Musk, who tweeted "hilarious."

"Cutting deportations to a meme is especially cruel, and contributes to the already substantial psychological harm caused to those who are impacted," director Amy Fischer said on NewsWeek.

Viewers questioned why the White House would go ahead with something like that. It's a reminder that online content from large organizations can create much opinion.

The video caused a big controversy about what can and should be posted online, especially on harder issues like deportation.