For several months now, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been posting ghoulish social media videos celebrating the agency’s ramped-up immigration raid efforts. For its latest propaganda, ICE is appealing to a younger audience by setting a video of arrests to the Pokémon anime theme song.
Not only was the clip posted to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) X/Twitter, but it was also uploaded to the official White House TikTok account. Captioned “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” the video goes far beyond using the Pokémon theme as a soundtrack.
In addition to splicing in images from the anime of Ash Ketchum throwing a Poké Ball, there are custom Pokémon cards featuring photos of individuals who were arrested by ICE, along with their alleged crimes, shown at the end. As of writing, the video has racked up well over 30 million views on X/Twitter, with another 3.8 million on TikTok.
Given the brazen use of Pokémon intellectual property, fans are calling upon Nintendo — which owns one-third of the franchise’s copyright and trademark through The Pokémon Company — to sue the US government for using the theme song.
This would not be the first time DHS and the Trump administration have landed in hot water for using unlicensed IP. In August, an ICE propaganda video was hit with a copyright takedown for using JAY-Z’s 2003 song “Public Service Announcement.”
At the time of writing, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have yet to comment on the White House using the Pokémon anime theme song to promote ICE arrests.
