The White House has released a video showing undocumented immigrants being shackled and escorted onto a deportation flight departing from Seattle.
The 41-second clip, shared on X on Tuesday with the title “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” includes close-up shots of chains and cuffs laid out on the tarmac, as well as detainees walking with their hands and ankles restrained.
One scene shows an immigrant walking past an officer with his hands cuffed in front of him and his ankles bound by a chain. Other shots include a close-up of a man’s handcuffs being secured, another individual’s feet in chains while ascending a stairway to the plane, and a man preparing to board. The faces of the detainees are not visible.
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The video’s tone—along with the White House’s caption—mirrors the Trump administration’s eagerness, and that of its supporters, for large-scale deportations.
The video was shared earlier Tuesday by the Seattle office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, with the words: “REMOVAL FLIGHT. A group of undocumented aliens are flown from Seattle as part of a process to finalize return to their home 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 Removal Operations unit.
But the video shared by the White House opens with a different clip: An officer standing behind a shackled migrant, appearing to roll down the collar of the person’s jacket or hooded sweatshirt.
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In ICE’s tweet, that shot 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, about 90 minutes later, the White House tweeted the edited version with the “ASMR” comment.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump has tasked to lead an initiative to slash the federal workforce, six minutes later reposted the White House “ASMR” tweet, writing, “Haha Wow.” Musk owns the social media site X.
President Donald Trump has made the crackdown on undocumented immigrants a priority for his second term in the White House. Federal agencies in the weeks since he was sworn in on Jan. 20 weeks have 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 allies dominating their foes.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request from CNBC for comment about 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.
Many people who replied to the tweet praised it, with one X user writing, “Keep it up! Love this!” while another wrote: “Thank you send them all back.”
But other people criticized the tweet, with one writing in reply, “This is disgusting.”
