The Plight of Migrants Is Deeply Misunderstood. Can a Video Game Help?

Over the past year, Karla Reyes and her squad astatine Anima Interactive person visited the US-Mexico borderline doubly to interrogation migrants and humanitarians. Once a month, Reyes interviews migrants remotely via video calls. She’s spoken to dozens. They travel from Latin America, but besides South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, each with a shared goal: to transverse into the US successful hunt of safety.

In January, hours aft President Donald Trump’s inauguration, thousands of migrants abruptly received announcement that their appointments with US Customs and Border Protection—the bureau that would assistance them summation asylum—had been canceled. The medication shut down the CBP One app that allows migrants to use for asylum. It was the archetypal of galore roadblocks the caller medication would erect successful beforehand of those seeking to immigrate to America.

“At a moment's notice, the people of their lives has been altered again,” Reyes says. “These are radical who person been waiting arsenic agelong arsenic years.”

For Reyes, it lone reinforced the consciousness of urgency astir her team’s existent project: a crowdfunded crippled called Take Us North astir migrants making the travel crossed the border. “Even though the crippled isn't released yet, we are reasoning critically astir however we tin inactive proceed to stock information, tackle disinformation, and stock resources with our community,” she says.

One of the biggest misconceptions astir migrants, Reyes says—one she hopes the crippled volition assistance correct—is the communicative of wherefore they permission their homes for the US. “The wide nationalist often gets this communicative that migrants are mostly trying to travel to the US purely for economical opportunity,” she says. “The world is that the bulk of the migrants that I've interviewed bash not privation to permission their homes. Most of them are fleeing persecution and violence. They're leaving down everything that they love, but they don't person different choice.”

Anima plans to merchandise Take Us North successful precocious 2026 oregon aboriginal 2027, astatine which constituent the circumstances migrants look could beryllium adjacent much stark than the ones they’re confronted with now.

In precocious February, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that “in a azygous period nether President Trump much than 20,000 amerciable aliens were arrested.” More arrests are definite to travel arsenic the medication attempts to ramp up deportations. According to a recent Washington Post report, much than 1 cardinal migrants admitted to the US during President Joe Biden’s tenure could look an expedited removal. Migrants who person been arrested successful the US look progressively unsafe conditions speech from conscionable deportation, including imprisonment astatine the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center successful Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. An asylum seeker’s travel is ne'er easy, but successful 2025 it’s an progressively frightening prospect.

Take Us North—a narrative-driven, adventure-survival crippled astir migrants traveling done the Sonoran desert—is attempting to some foster empathy and rise consciousness astir “issues that are unluckily often reduced successful mainstream media to statistic oregon divisive rhetoric,” Reyes says. Many migrants bash not privation to permission their homes, but are forced to, whether it’s due to the fact that of violence, persecution, oregon utmost poverty. Others, Reyes says, person been kidnapped and are incapable to instrumentality home. “These are guiltless and honorable radical who person conscionable been successful unfortunate circumstances,” she says.