Posts comparing Super Bowl, US border security misuse Israel photo
- Published on February 14, 2024 at 22:39
- Updated on February 23, 2024 at 17:57
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"This Sunday it will be harder to get into the Super Bowl... Than it will be to cross the border into the United States!" says text over the image.
The side-by-side comparison shows a 2015 photo of NFL fans passing through stadium security scanners in the state of Tennessee, above a second picture of 13 men hurrying through a fence.
"It's a sad world we live in," says one February 11 post sharing the meme on Instagram.
Similar posts spread across Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms ahead of the February 11, 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada. Immigration enforcement has already become a major issue of the 2024 presidential election.
Republican lawmakers used their narrow control of the US House of Representatives to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on February 13, arguing that President Joe Biden's immigration chief has allowed a surge of illegal entries across the southern US border with Mexico.
The move is likely to dissolve in the Democratic-led Senate. It comes after House Republicans opposed a bipartisan deal hammered out in the upper chamber that would have imposed the toughest asylum and border policies in decades. The blockage in the House came after pressure from former president Donald Trump to kill the legislative effort and deny Biden a pre-election policy win.
But the image in the meme circulating online is unrelated to the US-Mexico border.
A reverse image search revealed that a Reuters photojournalist took the photo near Israel's border with the West Bank in 2013 (archived here).
"Palestinian labourers from the West Bank run after illegally crossing Israel's controversial barrier in the southern West Bank near the southern city of Beersheba July 6, 2013," the caption says.
Security screenings were elevated for the Super Bowl, with Mayorkas's Homeland Security team coordinating to keep the millions of people at the event and in the surrounding area safe (archived here and here).
The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in an overtime thriller that drew a record 123.4 million television viewers.
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about the Super Bowl here, and the border here.
This article was updated in paragraph six to correct the date of US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas's impeachment.February 23, 2024 This article was updated in paragraph six to correct the date of US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas's impeachment.
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