New Delhi: The White House has turned an animated educational children’s show, The Magic School Bus, into “The Magic Deportation Bus,” using an altered image of Ms. Frizzle, the show’s primary character, her chameleon Liz, and five handcuffed passengers to promote the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign.
The administration did not attempt to soften the joke. In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis leaned into it: “Take a ride on the Magic School Bus to your home country!”
The image played on the show’s famous opening line — “Please let this be a normal field trip” — and linked it to a Fox News report celebrating an ICE operation in the Washington, D.C. region.
Within hours, the post had received more than 1.7 million views and sparked widespread criticism. People accused the government of turning a children’s franchise into a celebration of detention and deportation.
It is also the latest example of a broader pattern: The administration has increasingly used pop culture in its immigration messaging, from Studio Ghibli-style AI imagery to Frank Sinatra songs accompanying deportation footage.
What the Joke Hides
The administration has repeatedly said it would prioritise undocumented immigrants with criminal records for deportation. But data obtained by NBC News showed that 41% of people detained by ICE in the first two weeks of February 2025 had no previous criminal conviction or only a pending charge.
Those figures sit uneasily beside the faceless passengers shown at the back of the cartoon bus. Behind the administration’s memes are people with individual circumstances that disappear when they are reduced to characters in a political message. The joke turns them into props, stripping away the personal stories behind each deportation.
The reaction has also extended beyond the United States.
When the White House posted an AI-generated image of Cristian Soto Galeano, a Guatemalan man with dwarfism who had been detained by ICE in New Orleans, as a “Deported Edition Labubu,” Guatemala’s foreign ministry called the post “discriminatory and xenophobic.”
The ministry said migrants’ dignity must be respected regardless of their immigration status, stressing: “No human being should be degraded because of their immigration status.” It also invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming that rights and freedoms apply to everyone regardless of their origin or immigration status.
Also Read: Inside Trump’s immigration crackdown as net widens
A Broader Pattern
The White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE have spent months using humour, memes, and familiar cultural references to promote their immigration policies.
In February 2025, the administration shared an “ASMR” video showing shackled detainees being boarded onto planes. It received millions of views, while many users condemned the post as “disgusting” and “cruel”.
The pattern continued when Studio Ghibli-style AI images became popular online; the White House joined in, using the style for an image of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez being handcuffed by an immigration officer in front of an American flag. The post drew criticism even from some Trump supporters. One supporter said, “Would like us to enforce the law without turning into monsters.”
Music and children’s characters have also been pulled into the campaign. Officials played Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me” as detainees boarded deportation flights.
The administration also used Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Juno” in a video montage showing ICE raids.
Carpenter herself objected to the use of her song, calling the video “evil and disgusting” and telling the administration not to involve her or her music in its agenda.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)