Inside an ICE Defense Training on Fortnite

Hey there, this morning we have a wild one from 404 contributor Jules Roscoe reporting from a Simpsons-themed Fortnite lobby, where people are organizing events to practice what they'd do if ICE showed up in their real-life communities. “We have not been as effective at creating institutions," one of the organizers said. "So we’ve seen the hunger for those kinds of spaces for gamers."

In the deserted town square of the city of Springfield, three people huddle in an empty courthouse. Two of these people are civilians; one is a “vulnerable,” someone being pursued and targeted by government agents. They talk in hushed tones to one another, playing music to keep fear at bay. Above the door of the courthouse, a plaque reads, “Liberty and Justice for Most.”

At the bottom of the courthouse stairs, two government agents step out of a purple golf cart. They approach the door. They’re carrying guns. 

“Hey, is anyone inside?” one of them says. “Any vulnerables in here? We have a warrant. We have a warrant for any vulnerables in the area.” 

One civilian opens the door, sees the agents, and immediately slams it shut. After more warrant calls, the civilian says, “Slip it under the door.”

“I would slip it under the door, but there’s no space under the door,” the agent says, stuttering. 

The civilian pauses. “Well. Sounds like a personal problem.”

This was the scene in a Simpsons-themed Fortnite lobby on November 21, where members of a new 500-person gaming group gathered to practice what they would do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents came knocking at their doors in real life. The group, New Save Collective, is an effort to organize people in the gaming world who have more progressive ideas but no place to discuss them. 

“ Our hypothesis since we started this project has been that opposition forces like corporations and the military and the far right have done a really good job at weaponizing the social features of gaming,” said one of the organizers, who goes by PitaBreadFace online and spoke to 404 Media on condition of pseudonymity due to security concerns, as they said people claiming to be ICE agents have already infiltrated the group’s Discord server a few times. “ They’re building institutions in the gaming landscape, which is the biggest entertainment industry in the world, lest people forget.” 

“Gaming wasn’t kind of a random genre that we chose,” another player, called Siggelkow, told Wired ahead of the Friday event last week. “We’ve been tracking anti-immigrant myths and disinformation digitally for years.” 

Some examples of those weaponizations include the U.S. Navy playing e-sports to recruit teens and kids being roped into neo-Nazi propaganda groups in online shooter games. ICE is also using games, like the sci-fi first-person shooter Halo and the all-time favorite Pokémon, in its recruitment ads. “More pro-social forces have really lacked,” PitaBreadFace said. “We have not been as effective at creating institutions. So we’ve seen the hunger for those kinds of spaces for gamers.”

PitaBreadFace and other grassroots organizers have been working on the Collective for the past three years, more recently in partnership with formal non-profit advocacy groups like Define American and Immigrants Belong. The Fortnite event was run by the Collective, but is part of a larger campaign titled “Play Your Role,” which is intended to teach people about their rights and “counter fear-based misinformation about immigrants,” according to a statement written by the non-profits. The Play Your Role campaign also included a live-streamed Grand Theft Auto event last Thursday, in which gamers roleplayed with people dressed as real ICE agents during traffic stops or outside apparent detention centers. Earlier this year, Roblox players conducted similar roleplaying events to simulate ICE raids and protests. 

Scenes from the Nov. 21 Fortnite event. Redacted to remove players' usernames and other identifying information.

Organizers asked 404 Media not to join the official Fortnite lobby in real time; they said having reporters in the same space as Collective members might have exerted media pressure or kept them from getting the full experience. “ We’re not going to stream it for security reasons, and no reporters inside of it,” PitaBreadFace said on the morning ahead of the event. “Our main goal tonight is to really build and organize with the folks who are coming, and because I’m an organizer, that’s obviously the priority.”

However, they shared a number of clips from matches and discussions after the event had concluded. 

After some scuffling, the agents agree to “abandon the vehicle” and run off. As they are chased off, one person calls after them, “Yeah, I threw a pizza at you! I threw a pizza at you with extra bacon.” 

In another clip, the two gamers role-playing as ICE agents—portrayed by Fortnite’s Airhead character—are standing on their golf cart, surrounded by civilians in the middle of their pursuit of a “vulnerable,” the event’s chosen term for people being targeted by government agents.

“This does not concern you,” one of the agents says to the civilians, encouraging them to leave.

“We’re allowed to record,” one person responds. Another asks, “Who does it concern?” 

“We’re looking for two vulnerables,” the agent says, as the civilian group closes in on the golf cart. “Excuse us, you’re interfering. We have a court order.” 

After some scuffling, the agents agree to “abandon the vehicle” and run off. As they are chased off, one person calls after them, “Yeah, I threw a pizza at you! I threw a pizza at you with extra bacon.” 

The agents were played by the organizers behind the Collective, and they were noticeably less persistent than ICE agents in real life. That’s evidenced by them saying things like, “Excuse us,” but it’s also evident in their behavior. In the first clip, they don’t bust down the door of the courthouse; when a civilian briefly opens it, they don’t barge inside. At the end of that encounter, one agent says to the other, “This home is too protected; let’s go see if we can find a vulnerable somewhere else.” Given their reputation for violence in raids, IRL ICE agents are unlikely to give up as easily. 

But that kind of environment allows the training session to be a reasonable intensity for a gamer’s first round of practice responding to ICE, and still be a fun, safe place for people to hang out. According to PitaBreadFace, the main goal of the space wasn’t necessarily to be a specifically anti-ICE training facility, but more so to organize a community and build trust. And this tactical frivolity is a proven method of protest—ask anyone who wore a frog costume to a Portland protest earlier this year.

“ A situation, even though it’s virtual, where you can clearly overwhelm ICE’s numbers and do silly stupid things and work together easily and be connected to each other—it just felt like actually winning,” one gamer said in a clip provided to 404 Media. “It felt like a way to kind of heal some of the burnout.”

A virtual situation also allows players to fire back at ICE in ways that likely wouldn’t be practical in real life. In one clip, for example, two agents are chasing after a vulnerable, yelling, “Hey, stop right there!” 

When they get close enough, the vulnerable drops a Boogie Bomb, an item which forces another player to dance under a disco ball for about three seconds. 

“Oh,” the Boogie-Bombed agent exclaims, before the gamers start laughing. 

The event also had another component. Before the practice ICE raids, gamers went around to practice finding one another, creating groups and building connections. PitaBreadFace described this segment as learning how to “meet your neighbors, know those around you, and establish contact.” A lot of that, according to clips provided to 404 Media, involves doing dance emotes together; in one case, it was a team of about 10 people destroying an in-map mansion and yelling, “Pay your taxes!” 

But it also involved discussions about what community means. In the middle of a “Shout!” dance circle, one gamer said that they first learned the importance of community organizing when protesting the 2017 Muslim ban. 

“ I feel like community taught me that like if enough people came together and there was enough will, anything could happen,” they said. “I remember the first Muslim ban, and just hella people went to the airport, and we were able to petition for people to get released. And they were. It was cool to see that organically happen.”

New Save Collective plans to run more events similar to this one through the end of this year, at which point Fortnite is slated to get rid of the proximity chat mode it uses. PitaBreadFace said the response had been so far overwhelmingly positive.

“ I think gamers represent this constituency of people who are really common-sense,” PitaBreadFace said. “It’s not like they’re even super pro-immigrant. They’re just like, ‘No, this doesn’t make sense. This community member who’s been part of a community for 25 years is being ripped out of his home in the middle of the night. That doesn’t make sense, and we should do something about it.’ We have a lot of people who joined the [Discord] server who are like, ‘I actually don’t know, but I know this is wrong and I’m here to learn and participate.’”