Controversial Video Game Encourages Shooting Mexican Immigrants April 26, 2006 05:34 PM
Controversial video game encourages shooting Mexican immigrants
EL PASO, TX. - A controversial video game attached to an e-mail making the rounds of in-boxes around the country is highlighting just how some people feel about the immigration issue.
Many local residents have been forwarded an e-mail with the words "Border Patrol Game." However many are saying it is less a game and more an invitation to violence. In the game, players try to shoot and kill Mexican border crossers.
Inside the game there are three targets: a Mexican nationalist, a drug smuggler, and a pregnant woman running with two children which the game labels a "breeder."
Border Patrol spokesman Doug Nosier tells ABC-7, "They only perpetuate hate, not to mention show Border Patrol in a false light....it's horrendous and really unfortunate that these kind of games exist."
ABC-7 showed the game to immigrant advocate Illiana Holguin, whose first reaction was "Oh my God!"
Ms. Holguin went on to say, "That's terrible, that's horrible...it completely ignores the reason why people try to come to the us just the fact that they are fleeing horrible condition in their own county and are just trying to make a better life for themselves, its extremely offensive, extremely offensive."
Additionally, Ms. Holguin says the game is inaccurate. In the game setting, a sign on the border reads "Welcome to the United States" with an arrow pointing to a welfare office. Ms. Holguin says, "I think that's a very common misconception...immigrants are not even eligible for the majority of assistance programs...that's just wrong."
The game is found on a website run by Tom Metzger, a current Klu Klux Klan member and former Klan leader based out of Temecula, California. On the immigration issue Mr. Metzger tells ABC-7, "We must get them out of here by any means necessary."
Mr. Metzger also refers to this game as "target practice" and isn't a bit apologetic. His favorite character is the pregnant woman.
When asked why, Mr. Metzger tells ABC-7, "That's the most dangerous one of them all - we have a standard joke that so many are pregnant that they cross the border pregnant before they are even born, they have big families and soon they will kill North American and Anglo culture."
Mexicans aren't the only target on Mr. Metzger's website as it also features games where players can kill homosexuals and Jews. Mr. Metzger adds that he doesn't know the origin of any of these games, "When he likes one sent to him, he posts it".
Metzger says the games generate six million hits a month to his website.
Ms.Holguin responds that, "[this is] a game that encourages the hunting down and shooting of women and their families and their children is just unbelievable to me that anyone would find that entertaining or funny in the least."
According to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League, there has been on uptake in violence by extremist groups, similar to Mr. Metzger's, against Hispanics.