Border chaos footage from 2023 falsely shared as Mexico's 'response' to Trump trade policy

"A large number of refugees were ready to storm the US border today, with Mexican security guards only symbolically stopping them," reads simplified Chinese text overlaid on a Douyin video posted on January 22, 2025.

"That's what Trump gets for raising tariffs on Mexico!"

The 33-second clip, which was shared more than 2,500 times, shows scores of men, women and children pushing their way past border guards.

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Screenshot of the false Douyin post, captured on February 12, 2025

The clip surfaced after Trump threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico hours after taking office on January 20, accusing the country of failing to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the United States (archived link).

But the video, which was also shared on Weibo, was filmed in March 2023.

In exchange for delaying the implementation of new tariffs, Mexico began moving troops to its northern border as part of a 10,000-member deployment on February 4, 2025 -- days after the posts spread online (archived link).

"The deployment has already started," Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said a day after announcing a last-minute deal with Trump to tighten measures against illegal migration and cross-border smuggling of the drug fentanyl.

AFP previously debunked a similar claim the video was filmed after Trump's tariff threat, which was viewed millions of times in Spanish-language posts on Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, and X.

Border chaos

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage posted on X by Venezuelan news portal Alberto News on March 13, 2023 (archived link).

Its Spanish-language caption read, "Crisis at the US border: Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants forcibly entered through an international bridge between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas".

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Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the footage published by Venezuelan news portal Alberto Rod News (right)

Alberto News also published a report about the incident, which it said occurred on March 12, 2023 (archived link).

Mexican newspaper Milenio and Argentinian TV channel Noticias 26 also published the footage on March 13, 2023 (archived here and here).

"When they were overrun by the migrants, the Mexican authorities could not prevent them from advancing towards what is known as the hump of the bridge," said the Milenio anchor, who explained that the migrants later encountered "a fence of barbed wire" and US border securities.

An AFP video also shows the large crowd of mainly Venezuelans who began to gather near the bridge after a rumour spread that migrants would be allowed to cross into the United States (archived link).

Trump began his historic second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling immigration into the United States (archived link).

A slew of misinformation has followed, with AFP debunking false claims about purported deportation plans and misrepresented images.