I Can End Deportation (ICED) Game

This information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) initiative draws on an entertaining, interactive medium to educate and inspire high school and college students about immigration policies and problems. Having downloaded the game from the ICED website, players can choose one of five young characters to inhabit, and then live out the day-to-day life of that immigrant youth as he or she seeks to become a US citizen. Each of the characters is based on an amalgam of true case studies and represents a different region of the world and a different immigrant status/situation. For example, 16-year-old Ayesha, a permanent green card resident originally from India, is deported because she wrote an essay in school about freedom of speech and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As the character is being chased by immigration officers, the player must make moral decisions and answer myth and fact questions about current immigration policies. If the player chooses or answers incorrectly, he or she increases his or her chances of being thrown into detention. (Live phone calls from a detention centre were recorded to communicate to players the first moments of panic when someone is detained.) Once in detention, the character "endures both physical separation from his/her family and unjust conditions while awaiting - often for unknown amounts of time - the random outcome of his/her case." Players can gain "civic points" by doing good deeds in the community. There are 4 ending scenarios to the game (deportation, indefinite detention, voluntary deportation, or citizenship) - allowing players to take on each character and play through the game multiple times.

The game itself is only part of a larger educational and activist campaign for fair immigration laws. Visitors to the ICED website may learn how to use the internet to share what they have learned from ICED about human rights and immigration. In addition, the 115-page ICED curriculum [PDF] is designed to bring the game into the classroom; it includes background information on immigration, a sequence of 4 human rights lessons based on the game, and various appendices that provide resources, guidelines for follow-up work, and action ideas designed to empower students to make a change. There is also a 66-page discussion guide [PDF] available. High school teachers and students, as well as young people in after-school programmes, helped to develop the curriculum and guide.

Human Rights.

Breakthrough reports that detention centres are basically prisons that are run by the government or private companies. Breakthrough claims that "[c]onditions are often harsh. Detainees have limited access to communication and are transferred from one part of the country to another, without regard for access to their family and lawyers. Since 2004, 66 people have died in detention - including legal permanent residents - with numerous allegations of medical negligence". According to an April 2006 DHS report, the system overseen by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains over 230,000 people per year. Since 1994, the average daily detention population has grown 5 times over, from 5,532 to 27,500.

Deportation is the expulsion of an immigrant from the United States. DHS reports that, since 1996, almost 2 million legal and undocumented immigrants have been deported for a variety of reasons - including nonviolent offenses or undocumented status. Approximately 1.6 million spouses and children living in the United States have been separated from their spouse or parent because of these deportations.

Breakthrough claims that "[c]urrent United States immigration laws have devastated our immigrant communities, as they now live in fear of detention and deportation without due process", which is an established course for judicial proceedings or other governmental activities designed to safeguard the legal rights of the individual.