DHS Converts Headquarters Into 250,000-Square-Foot Escape Room

The Department of Homeland Security began converting its Washington headquarters into a 250,000-square-foot escape room Tuesday, saying the project would allow the agency to “explore all operational futures” after Rep. Delia Ramirez introduced legislation to dismantle DHS and abolish ICE.

The attraction, formally titled Exit Strategy: A Whole-of-Government Experience, opens with visitors receiving a lanyard, a half-charged radio, and a sealed envelope marked “READ ONLY AFTER THE THIRD REORGANIZATION.” Teams are then locked inside a replica interagency conference room and instructed to locate the official responsible for approving their departure.

“It is not a game,” said an agency spokesperson standing beside a fog machine installed near the visitor-security desk. “It is a fully immersive exercise in identifying which office has jurisdiction over a problem after that office has been moved, renamed, or converted into a task force.”

The first room, called The Screening Annex, requires players to sort 800 identical blue folders into categories including “urgent,” “not urgent,” “urgent pending review,” and “urgent but no longer within our mission scope.” A hidden magnet under one folder opens a filing cabinet containing a 14-page memorandum explaining that the cabinet is not authorized to open.

Participants who make it through the annex enter the Situation Room, where a wall of monitors displays a live feed of other teams filling out the same release form. Every seven minutes, an actor in business attire enters carrying a box of branded stress balls and announces a new departmental restructuring. The room’s emergency exit can be unlocked only after players correctly identify which reorganization has been superseded by a newer reorganization.

Officials said early testing revealed an unexpected problem: several veteran employees completed the course in under four minutes by quietly leaving through the loading dock. DHS responded by adding a final chamber known as Procurement, where teams must obtain three competing bids for a key, submit the key for environmental review, and attend a mandatory webinar on key stewardship.

Ramirez’s bill would dismantle the department and abolish ICE. DHS officials said the escape room was not intended as a response to any specific legislative proposal, describing it instead as a “resilience-forward public-facing continuity installation.”

At the end of the course, successful visitors emerge into a gift shop selling commemorative compasses, bottled water, and a $38 souvenir map showing exactly where the exit used to be.