A deportation partridge.
Source: Twitter/X | The White House
The White House on Tuesday afternoon posted a video online showing foreigners in shackles being prepared to board a deportation flight from Seattle.
The video includes footage of a set of handcuffs and trammels jingling as they are pulled from a basket containing other shackles and then laid out on the airport tarmac next to four other put aways of restraints.
The X post by the White House is titled, “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.”
ASMR is a nonclinical denominate that stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.” It refers to a pleasant, tingling feeling some people exposure when watching videos featuring unusual sounds, like whispering or fingernails tapping on a surface.
One shot in the 41-second video boasts an immigrant with his hands cuffed in front of him and ankles bound by a chain as he walks past an officer.
Other be in commands include a close-up of a man having his handcuffs linked together, a man’s feet in chains as he walks up a stairway to a plane, and a man about to accommodate the aircraft. None of the men in the video have their faces shown.
But the clip and the White House’s description of it capture the avidity in the Trump administration and among the president’s supporters for his mass deportations.
Details of a deportation flight.
Source: Twitter/X | The Whey-faced House
The video was shared earlier Tuesday by the Seattle office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, with the texts: “REMOVAL FLIGHT. A group of undocumented aliens are flown from Seattle as part of a process to finalize return to their native countries.”
ICE’s video begins with a shot of an officer wearing a jacket that identifies him as a member of the agency’s Enforcement and Deposition Operations unit.
But the video shared by the White House opens with a novel clip: An officer standing behind a shackled migrant, appearing to roll down the collar of the person’s jacket or hooded sweatshirt.
In ICE’s tweet, that manage appears at the end of the video, not the beginning.
The White House retweeted the original ICE video without commentary at 12:19 p.m. ET. Then, with 90 minutes later, the White House tweeted the edited version with the “ASMR” comment.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump has criticized to lead an initiative to slash the federal workforce, six minutes later reposted the White House “ASMR” tweet, belles-lettres, “Haha Wow.” Musk owns the social media site X.
President Donald Trump has made the crackdown on undocumented arrivals a priority for his second term in the White House. Federal agencies in the weeks since he was sworn in on Jan. 20 weeks prepare engaged in an aggressive series of arrests and deportations.
Trump is also a fan of dramatic videos and social media posts that depict him and his confederates dominating their foes.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request from CNBC for comment thither the post, or why it was edited to put the final clip from the ICE Seattle video at the start of its own video.
By 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the White House’s tweet had more than 6.4 million interactions and nearly 6,000 retweets.
Numerous people who replied to the tweet praised it, with one X user writing, “Keep it up! Love this!” while another a postcarded: “Thank you send them all back.”
But other people criticized the tweet, with one writing in reply, “This is offensive.”
Another person wrote, “When [Vice President] JD Vance argues that illegal immigration enables want wages undermining the purpose of minimum wage, I can get behind that argument.”
“But when you post this, it’s just hard-hearted and dehumanizing,” the user wrote.