Post misleadingly claims video shows Nigerians being deported from US
- Published on February 14, 2025 at 11:50
- Updated on February 14, 2025 at 11:54
- 4 min read
- By Samad UTHMAN, AFP Nigeria
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“God help Africans. Deportation ongoing (sic),” reads a text overlay on a Facebook reel video posted on February 1, 2025.
Shared more than 900 times, the clip is narrated by a man who chastises Africans, and in particular Nigerians, for emigrating to the US and other countries in search of greener pastures.
Speaking in Pidgin, the man says: “See how Donald Trump is deporting everyone as if the US is a paradise. If not for the bad, wicked, inhumane and devilish African leaders we have in Africa, why would someone leave his homeland?”
At the beginning, the video shows a clip of a shirtless man speaking inaudibly to the camera while being handcuffed by police officers. Then, a second clip shows two officers running after a man in a bid to arrest him. A third clip shows hundreds of people queuing on a tarmac to board large planes — suggesting a mass deportation scene. The last clip shows close-ups of handcuffed men and women boarding a cargo plane.
A review of the comments under the Facebook reel indicates that many people appeared to believe the claim.
“Africa seems to be under a curse,” one user wrote, while another said, “This is not right”.
The post was shared by a Nigeria-based account called “Queensley Purity Edoja”, which features local content and has more than 6,000 followers.
However, the video does not show Nigerians being deported from the US.
Unrelated clips
Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes in the video, AFP Fact Check traced the four clips to find their original contexts.
The first clip was traced back to a longer, better-quality version published by a Facebook account on January 4, 2024 – that is, before Trump signed the executive orders (archived here).
In the video, police officers are seen handcuffing a young shirtless Nigerian — who speaks to the camera and states his name as Philip Alafe — in front of Canada’s Toronto General Hospital.
A Google search of Alafe’s full name found a 2017 article in a Canadian news outlet that explains that he was arrested in 2015 for alleged dangerous driving and then sued the Ontario police for an alleged deprivation of medical care after he said officers took away his medication and left him naked in a jail cell overnight (archived here).
AFP Fact Check also traced the second clip, of a man running from police, to a post on an Atlanta-based Instagram lifestyle account (archived here).
It published the footage on August 17, 2024 – several months before the election that returned Trump to power for the second time.
While the post lacks context, a review of the account shows it has published similar videos of people evading police.
The third clip, of hundreds of people queuing on an airport tarmac, showed tell-tale signs of being AI-generated, notably the unnatural movements of the crowd of people and a vehicle morphing out of thin air.
AFP Fact Check once again conducted a reverse image search on keyframes and traced the clip to a TikTok post published on January 30, 2025, with “goodbye … US” as a text overlay (archived here).
A review of the TikTok account showed that it regularly publishes dramatic AI-generated videos without noting that the scenes they depict are not real.
The fourth and final clip, however, does show a deportation scene. We traced it to a video published on January 28, 2025, by WYKC, an NBC-affiliated broadcaster in Ohio (archived here).
According to the broadcaster’s caption, “The DOD [Department of Defense] has released video showing what it calls ‘a group of illegal aliens’ being loaded onto a C-17 Globemaster III at Fort Bliss, Texas on January 23rd for a deportation flight.”
The caption continued: “Nearly 1,200 people were arrested in just one day on Sunday [January 26] as immigration enforcement operations continue to take place in cities across the United States.”
Other news reports that relayed footage from this scene explained that the people being deported on this flight were Guatemalans (archived here).
Nigerians on deportation list
Nigerian newspaper PUNCH reported that Nigerian undocumented immigrants in the US have restricted their movements to avoid being arrested and deported following Trump’s order (archived here).
According to a document obtained by Fox News from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 1,445,549 foreign nationals were on the immigration agency’s list of people identified for deportation as of November 24, 2024 (archived here).
Somalia had the highest figure of illegal African immigrants on the list, with 4,090 nationals, followed by 3,690 Nigerians.
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