Video misrepesented as dog chasing off migrant in Ceuta
- Published on August 6, 2026 at 18:48
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
After a wave of migrants poured into Ceuta from Morocco in late July 2026, social media posts claimed a video showed a dog chasing off a new arrival caught trespassing in the Spanish enclave. But the footage was filmed before the migration crisis and in the Spanish region of Murcia, according to the original TikTok poster, who shared the clip for humor and clarified that the man chased was a cousin.
"Moroccan migrant trespassed into a private yard in Ceuta, Spain, and received a 'special welcome,'" says an August 1, 2026 post sharing the clip on Facebook.
The video shows a man climbing over a fence as a large dog stands on its hind legs below and barks.
Similar posts placing the moment in Ceuta spread in English and Spanish across Facebook, Instagram and X, where the Russian state-controlled news network RT amplified it.
The posts followed extraordinary scenes July 30 and July 31 in which tens of thousands of people, mostly Moroccans, rushed the Spanish enclave in North Africa on foot or by swimming. Spain sent troops to bolster security as the influx -- the territory's largest-ever mass crossing -- drove the European nation into an international crisis.
Authorities said the incident claimed dozens of lives and that 70,000 of the 72,000 migrants who reached Ceuta have returned to Morocco.
The clip claimed to show a dog scaring a trespassing migrant off a private property in Ceuta, however, is misrepresented.
A TikTok handle visible in some of the posts allowed AFP to trace the clip to the user "@anonimo47omerta," who uploaded the original version on July 9, three weeks before the incident at the border between Ceuta and Morocco (archived here).
The user's only other post shows a similar chase involving the same dog and surroundings (archived here).
Both posts carry the hashtag "#humor" and are geotagged to Murcia, the name of a city and region in southeastern Spain.
In response to one comment on the video, the poster said the man scaling the fence in the video was his cousin, who he added is afraid of the dog.
The poster also replied to several other comments asking if the video was recorded in Ceuta, saying it was not. And he commented on another user's post about the video to say that the dog was his and that he recorded the video in Torre-Pacheco, a town in the Murcia region (archived here).
The poster also liked posts from the Spanish outlets Maldita and Newtral fact-checking the false claims about his video (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the migrant situation in Ceuta here.
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