White House tweets ‘ASMR’ video of immigrants in shackles

The White House on Tuesday afternoon posted a video online showing immigrants in shackles being prepared to board a deportation flight from Seattle.

The video includes footage of a set of handcuffs and chains jingling as they are pulled from a basket containing other shackles and then laid out on the airport tarmac next to four other sets of restraints.

The X post by the White House is titled, “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.”

ASMR is a nonclinical term that stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.” It refers to a pleasant, tingling feeling some people experience when watching videos featuring unusual sounds, like whispering or fingernails tapping on a surface.

One shot in the 41-second video shows an immigrant with his hands cuffed in front of him and ankles bound by a chain as he walks past an officer.

Other shots include a close-up of a man having his handcuffs linked together, a man’s feet in chains as he walks up a stairway to a plane, and a man about to board the aircraft. None of the men in the video have their faces shown.

But the clip and the White House’s description of it capture the enthusiasm in the Trump administration and among the president’s supporters for his mass 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.

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.”

Another person wrote, “When [Vice President] JD Vance argues that illegal immigration enables poverty wages undermining the purpose of minimum wage, I can get behind that argument.”

“But when you post this, it’s just cruel and dehumanizing,” the user wrote.