The Buzz

Bordering on Ridiculous

Americans, it seems, are willing to make a game out of almost anything. Witness the national obsession with turning everything from presidential elections to celebrity love matches into occasions for frenzied wagering. Now it's the deadly serious matter of illegal immigration that's become the subject of gaming, this time online games that draw in U.S. border immigration agencies as well.

In 2002, a Flash-based game called "Border Patrol" debuted on the Internet. It allows players to shoot groups called "Mexican nationalists," "drug smugglers" or pregnant women with children called "breeders" as they run past a sign reading: Welcome to the United States. When a group is hit, blood spatters and a cry of pain is heard.

Now comes ICED!, a new computer game with the opposite message. Players are young immigrants experiencing the usual trials of everyday life in New York City with the elevated risks faced by those who are not citizens. Among the possible characters are a Mexican illegal immigrant, an Indian green card-holder and a student on a visa from Japan. At every turn, they make decisions that can end in arrest or even deportation, from reporting domestic violence to jumping the subway turnstile.

Set to launch in January, ICED! is an acronym for "I can end deportation," as well as a play on ICE, the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Homeland Security Department's largest investigative arm, charged with finding and deporting illegal immigrants.

Breakthrough, a human rights group in New York, produced the game, which was created with the help of 100 New York City high schoolers. It's an example of a growing trend among game makers: serious games. Examples include games about hunger, such as "Darfur Is Dying;" international crisis, such as "Peacemaker," about Israeli-Palestinian relations; and others about immigration such as "Crosser."

DHS immigration agencies aren't overly concerned about their online portrayals. Contacted about ICED! by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, Tim Counts, spokesman for ICE at its Bloomington, Minn., office, said, "This is a video game, and most people realize video games are a work of fiction."

Public Security

With the recent furor about the behavior of private security company employees in Iraq, it's easy to forget that the United States not only has military forces providing protection there, but also diplomatic guards.

There might be only 1,450 of them worldwide, but State Department Diplomatic Security agents are charged with protecting people, facilities and information at 285 posts. While their primary functions are to protect the secretary of State, the ambassador to the United Nations, visiting dignitaries and American diplomats overseas, they also investigate passport and visa fraud and issue security clearances.

State's Diplomatic Security bureau also manages the Counterterrorism Rewards Program, which pays informants for tips on potential or past terrorist attacks. The program has paid more than $62 million to 43 individuals since its inception in 1984. It is credited with the capture of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Mir Amal Kasi, who shot and killed two people outside CIA headquarters.

State began contracting out security functions long before the Sept. 11 attacks. Following the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983, State began paying companies to provide security at various overseas installations. In 1994, the department hired bodyguards to protect its personnel in Haiti. The practice continued during the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia in the 1990s. Realizing that the need for bodyguards was not going to go away, the department issued a long-term contract to DynCorp International in March 2000 to protect diplomats in the former Yugoslavia and Israel, and in 2002, in Afghanistan.

Following the invasion of Iraq, and the growth of the insurgency there, DynCorp was unable to provide enough guards, so two other companies, Blackwater USA and Triple Canopy Inc., were awarded contracts as well. Under an umbrella contract known as the Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract, State pays for bodyguards in seven locales: Jerusalem; Bosnia; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Baghdad, Basra, Al Hillah and Kirkuk in Iraq. The department puts the total number of security personnel under the contract at 1,433, of which 1,261 are in Iraq protecting nearly 1,000 U.S. embassy personnel. The annual cost of the contract is $571 million-$520 million of that goes to Iraq.

-Greg Grant