Video does not show ICE arresting 6-year-old girl

"A 6-year-old immigrant child is handcuffed with hands behind their back and arrested. Trump's America," says an October 11, 2025 post on Threads.

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Screenshot from Threads taken October 20, 2025

Similar posts spread across platforms, including X, as Trump continued his unprecedented push to send the US military to Democrat-controlled cities to support his hardline mass-deportation policies and what he says is a crackdown on crime.

The Republican president has succeeded in ordering troops onto the streets of Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis, Tennessee. His administration on October 17 asked the Supreme Court to lift lower court rulings blocking his deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.

News reports from CNN and other US outlets have documented instances where children were caught up in Trump's sweeping immigration raids, and a ProPublica investigation found that nearly 20 children who are American citizens, including two with cancer, have been detained.

But the clip spreading online does not show an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent handcuffing a 6-year-old girl.

AFP previously debunked matching claims that circulated in Spanish in June.

The footage was lifted from a YouTube video shared April 1 by a user who filmed the police interaction (archived here).

The user, who goes by "Siberian Tiger" on YouTube, places the incident in Vancouver, Washington and describes the arrestee in his caption as a young woman who was accused of jaywalking and obstruction.

The longer YouTube footage shows the woman's face -- revealing she is older than age 6 -- and shows the officer letting her go. It also includes a brief interview with the woman, who admits to being detained for crossing a highway.

In April 25 posts on Facebook and Instagram, the Clark County Sheriff's Office in Washington detailed what happened in response to "inaccurate claims ... that a CCSO deputy arrested a child" (archived here and here).

"That claim is simply not true," the agency wrote.

The posts say a sheriff's deputy saw someone walking across "a busy intersection with no crosswalk and moving traffic."

"Upon contact, the individual provided a name that did not return any records," the office said.

"After further investigation, the deputy identified her as a 27-year-old woman by matching her to prior booking photos. She was not arrested. She was briefly detained while the deputy determined her identity, then given a verbal warning for walking in traffic and released."

Reached by AFP, Chris Skidmore, the sheriff's office's public information officer, confirmed the posts claiming to show ICE arresting a 6-year-old child include footage of the same incident the department detailed on Facebook and Instagram.

In an October 15 email, Skidmore told AFP: "Those viral posts are completely made up."

AFP previously fact-checked similar posts claiming another video showed ICE agents handcuffing a baby.

Read more of AFP's fact-checks on US politics here.