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The Similarity Is About Spectacle

Again, that does not make the Patriot Games identical to Suzanne Collins’ fictional arena. The books and films involve violence, death, and an authoritarian government using terror to maintain control. The real Patriot Games are an athletic competition.

But The Hunger Games was never only about violence. It was also about a government turning young people into symbols, assigning them regional identities, packaging their personal stories, and converting competition into national entertainment. That is the part people recognized immediately, and it is the part supporters keep pretending is too ridiculous to discuss.

The administration could have created a national youth sports festival built around teams, cooperation, cultural exchange, and shared celebration. It could have chosen any number of formats that did not echo one of the most recognizable dystopian stories of the modern era. Instead, it selected one boy and one girl to stand in for each jurisdiction and turned the whole thing into primetime spectacle.

Citizenship Was Also Pitched as Reality Television

The Patriot Games would be easier to laugh off if they stood alone. They do not.

In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that it was reviewing a private producer’s proposal for a reality television program called The American. The concept reportedly involved 12 immigrants traveling around the country and competing in American-themed challenges, including mining for gold in California, assembling part of a Model T in Detroit, and making pizza in New York.

The reported ending was the most disturbing part. The winner would conclude the series with a citizenship ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

To be clear, the White House never approved the program. Television producer Rob Worsoff pitched it, and DHS kept it in the earliest stage of review. The department said then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had not reviewed or endorsed it. The show never reached production.

Those distinctions matter because accuracy matters. Trump did not personally order immigrants to compete for citizenship on television, and the proposal never became official government policy.

That does not make the premise any less grotesque.

Citizenship Is Not a Game-Show Prize

DHS says it receives hundreds of media proposals and reviews them. Fine. That explains how the pitch entered the system. It does not explain why officials treated a show about immigrants performing Americanness as worthy of serious consideration.

Citizenship is not a game-show prize. It is a legal status governed by federal law, eligibility requirements, background checks, interviews, an application process, and an oath. Immigrants should not have to prove they are entertaining enough, marketable enough, or sufficiently American before a studio audience.

The proposal treated naturalization as content. It turned the immigrant experience into a string of challenges designed to create suspense, competition, and elimination. Even though the show never moved forward, the concept belongs to the same political imagination as the Patriot Games: American identity becomes something the government can stage, judge, rank, and broadcast.

One group competes to represent the nation. Another is imagined competing for the right to join it.