DHS will continue using game and pop culture iconography in messaging
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is promising to continue its campaign of posting memes and recruiting material based on pop-culture imagery, including those from the world of video games. This comes days after it and the White House promoted images on social media depicting President Trump as player character Master Chief, and recruitment ads encouraging would-be ICE agents to "Destroy the flood" [sic] (a reference to the Flood, the zombie-like antagonists of the Halo series).
This promise suggests that more game developers and industry professionals may see the US government use the games they work on for recruitment purposes, or to push unproven claims of high crime rates driven by undocumented immigrants. Game File spoke with a number of former Halo franchise developers who condemned the posts, with former series Jaime Griesemer calling the DHS ad "ought to offend every Halo fan, regardless of political orientation."
Word of DHS' plans comes from a comment sent to independent journalist Alyssa Mercante, who sought comment from the agency over its impromptu ad campaign. "We will reach people where they are with content they can relate to and understand, whether that be Halo, Pokémon, Lord of the Rings, or any other medium," an agency spokesperson stated, adding that it was "laser focused" on pushing messaging spotlighting the aforementioned unproven claims about immigrant crime rates.
According to Mercante and other journalists, Microsoft declined to comment on the Halo-themed posts.
The Trump administration continues to embrace game-adjacent 'meme culture'Mercante had previously received comment from the White House celebrating the President's overseeing of the end of "the console wars," which was proclaimed by the GameStop X account on Friday after Microsoft announced Halo: Campaign Evolved would debut on the PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox Series XS. GameStop posted a number of celebratory manipulated images of President Trump with the Master Chief in the hours afterward.
The DHS previously invoked the spirit of video games in a number of social media messages in September 2025 drawing on imagery and slogans from the Pokémon franchise. The Pokémon Company (which is partially owned by Nintendo), distanced itself from these posts, saying that "it was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content, and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property."
These posts followed a number of promotional images earlier in 2025 promoting President Trump's agenda through the lens of Disney's Star Wars series, AI-generated images inspired by Studio Ghibli. Neither company issued any statement following these posts, though a number of musicians have consistently pushed back against their work being used by the Administration.
Given the DHS' pattern of jumping from pop culture reference to pop culture reference, other developers may find their work used to promote its policies in the next few years.
Game Developer has reached out to Microsoft for comment on this story and will provide an update when the company responds.
