Image of Trump supporter in ICE custody is altered
- Published on January 28, 2025 at 22:36
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"'Let's enjoy what has been voted,'" says a January 27, 2025 post on X.
The image shows agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) escorting the man.
Similar posts spread in English and Spanish across X and other platforms after Trump announced a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling US immigration.
Immigration authorities conducted sweeping raids in cities including Chicago, Illinois as the administration moved quickly after Trump's January 20, 2025 inauguration to ramp up deportations, including by relaxing rules governing enforcement actions at locations such as schools, churches and workplaces.
Trump made some gains among Latino voters in the 2024 election, when he defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to return to the White House.
But the picture purporting to show one of his own supporters swept up in an ICE workplace raid is manipulated.
A reverse image search surfaced the original photo in news articles from NPR, the Guardian and other media outlets about a June 2018 raid on a Fresh Mark meatpacking plant in Salem, Ohio, that saw ICE officials detain 146 workers (archived here, here and here). The raid took place during Trump's first term in office.
A caption on Getty Images reads: "US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents arrested alleged immigration violators at Fresh Mark, Salem, June 19, 2018" (archived here). The service credits the photo to ICE.
In the original, the man in handcuffs is wearing a grey shirt with no message on the back. The officers' shirts also say "HSI" rather than "ICE."
An ICE press release from the time said the agents were executing a criminal search warrant at the plant as part of a year-long investigation "based on evidence that Fresh Mark may have knowingly hired illegal aliens at its meat processing and packaging facility" and that many were "utilizing fraudulent identification belonging to U.S. citizens" (archived here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about migration here.
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