USA07 August, 20262 min read
White House Uses Spider-Man Imagery In ICE Instagram Campaign, Sparks Marvel Backlash
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
White House Instagram post links Spider-Man to ICE agents to promote immigration enforcement. Marvel fans criticise; calls to remove the imagery and boycott.
Spider-Man ICE Post
The White House used Spider-Man imagery in an Instagram campaign promoting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the official account posting a four-photo carousel that begins with Spider-Man releasing his iconic web and ends with several men handcuffed and covered in spiderwebs.
USA TODAY said the post reads "Your friendly neighborhood ICE agents," and it reported that as of Aug. 7 the carousel had gained traction with more than 32,000 users leaving comments.
USA TODAY also reported that when the fourth photo was uploaded into AI-image detectors Sightengine, Zero GPT and Deep AI, the image tested between 96-99% likely to be AI-generated.
The campaign drew immediate backlash from Marvel fans, including a USA TODAY comment that said "Spider-Man would not support this," and another user comment that read "My spider senses are tingling for a lawsuit."
Criticism and Calls to Sue
Euronews said Marvel fans criticized the White House for using Spider-Man in the latest campaign to promote ICE, describing the post as showing Spider-Man firing a web that ends in a final image of a group of men caught in it. Euronews quoted the White House caption "Criminal illegal aliens will be caught and deported" and said the post has sparked controversy online with people calling for the account to take the post down and Marvel fans outraged that their hero has been used to promote ICE.
The Euronews comments section included the line "Stan Lee would never approve" and another user statement: "Coming from the official communications arm of the United States government, this is embarrassing." TMZ framed the same Instagram effort as turning Spider-Man into an ICE agent, saying the administration captioned the photo "Your friendly neighborhood ICE agents" and depicting Spider-Man trapping "criminal illegal aliens" in his web.
Detentions, Deaths, and Fallout
Folha de S.Paulo said the White House published the Spider-Man image on Thursday (5) on its official Instagram account, associating the hero with ICE agents amid what it described as a record surge in the detention of immigrants. Folha de S.Paulo reported that the post’s caption said "Criminal illegal aliens will be caught and deported" and that "Your friendly neighborhood ICE agents" appeared in the image, while it also tied the timing to detention figures it attributed to CBS.
It said that in June there were more than 46,000 detainees in ICE custody and an average of about 1,500 arrests per day, and it added that at the end of July Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor Thiago Brito was arrested by the agency at Philadelphia airport. Folha de S.Paulo also reported that last Saturday (1st) Salvadoran Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo died in ICE custody in New Jersey, increasing the number of immigrant deaths in detainment since the beginning of the current Trump administration to 56.