Posts misrepresent 2015 Greece photo in critique of Biden immigration policy
- Published on March 18, 2024 at 20:19
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"A mass invasion of a country is an act of war. Abandoning border security is an act of treason," says text over the image, which "Wall Street Silver," an X account that has previously spread misinformation, shared to its 1.2 million followers in a March 15, 2024 post.
The meme spread across X and other platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. It shows a photo of migrants above a picture of Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's homeland security secretary, suggesting the photo depicts the situation at the US-Mexico border.
The image of migrants also circulated separately in posts warning about people illegally entering the United States.
Immigration enforcement has already become a major issue of the 2024 presidential election, which is likely to pit Donald Trump against Biden in a rematch of the 2020 race.
Republican lawmakers used their narrow control of the US House of Representatives to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on February 13, arguing that Biden's immigration chief has allowed a surge of illegal entries across the southern US border with Mexico.
The move, expected to dissolve in the Democratic-led Senate, comes after House Republicans at Trump's urging killed a bipartisan deal hammered out in the upper chamber that would have imposed the toughest asylum and border policies in decades.
But the picture of migrants in the meme circulating online is nearly 10 years outdated -- and was taken in Greece.
Reverse image and keyword searches led AFP to the original picture, posted to the photo-sharing app Flickr on October 15, 2015 (archived here). The caption says it shows the Greek village of Idomeni, located at the country's border with North Macedonia.
AFP independently verified the location, geolocating the picture to a train station in Idomeni (archived here). Google Maps Street View imagery, Google Maps photos and other pictures of the railway stop online show the same canopy, hanging light fixtures, poles, doorways and windows with red trimming, and signage for "Kyaikeion Cafe-Bar" and "Duty Free Shops" (archived here, here, here, here, and here.)
AFP has also captured photos of the station.
The train in the image spreading online also appears to match the design of locomotives used along the route, such as the OSE Hellenic Train Class 120 (archived here and here).
AFP reached out to the photographer, Martin Leveneur, for additional comment via Flickr, but no response was forthcoming.
Greece and North Macedonia are both situated along the migrant trail through which people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East have trekked toward northern Europe.
AFP reported in December 2015 -- two months after Leveneur posted the photo to Flickr -- that Greek police were removing some 2,300 foreigners from the border with North Macedonia after the country started screening new arrivals by nationality.
AFP has previously debunked other images misrepresenting overseas scenes as photos from the US border, including here and here.
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