Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers havebeeninstructed toramp up immigration raids across the country since President Donald Trump took office. Trump reportedly directed ICE to conduct at least 1,500 arrests daily, setting a quota of roughly 75 arrests per day for each of its 25 field offices, particularly targeting individuals with outstanding removal orders or criminal records.
Images appearing to show ICE arrests have gone viral online, including one of a young girl screaming during an interaction with an ICE agent.
Christians ok with this? pic.twitter.com/vyYdsJRNlE
— REPUBLICANS AGAINST MAGA (@michaelt5656) January 26, 2025
VERIFY reader Francisco asked us on Instagram if this other image that shows a man wearing a “LATINOS FOR TRUMP” shirt handcuffed and being escorted by ICE agents, is real.
QUESTION #1
Is the image of a young girl being detained by an ICE agent real?
THE SOURCES
- @LiveOnTheChat statement to Snopes
- RevEye, a reverse image search engine
- VERIFY analysis of the image
ANSWER #1
No, the image is not real. It was made with artificial intelligence.
WHAT WE FOUND
The image is AI, X user @LiveOnTheChat, who created the image, told fact-checking website Snopes. It was generated with Grok, which is X’s AI creation tool.
AI-generated images have misshapen or distorted features. Numbers, letters, textures and background details are often distorted or over-stylized. AI experts call these details “artifacts” – clear indicators the content is AI-generated.
In this image, the girl’s left shoulder appears distorted. The ICE agent’s ear is also misshapen. The bottom of the image appears stylized, with the fabric textures changing lower down in the image.
In addition, a reverse image search revealed that this image was not published by any reputable news outlets.
@LiveOnTheChat provided Snopes with a screenshot showing four images Grok generated by the text prompt “generate an image of Police ICE agents aggressively dragging Latino children crying out of a 2nd grade classroom.”
VERIFY reached out to @LiveOnTheChat but did not hear back at the time of publication.
QUESTION #2
Is the image of ICE detaining a man wearing a “Latinos for Trump” shirt real?
THE SOURCES
- Original ICE photo from June 19, 2018, distributed by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS)
- RevEye, a reverse image search engine
ANSWER #2
No, the image of ICE detaining a man wearing a “Latinos for Trump” shirt isn’t real.
WHAT WE FOUND
The image was digitally altered to falsely depict an ICE agent arresting a man wearing a shirt supporting Trump. In the original photo, the detained individual was not wearing any pro-Trump apparel.
VERIFY was able to find the original photo using RevEye, a reverse image search engine.
The original photo was taken in June 2018 by ICE, distributed by DVIDS, which is the official U.S. military portal for distributing images and video. According to the caption of the photo, ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents executed search warrants at several locations of Fresh Mark, which is a meat supplier based in Ohio. This picture was taken at the Salem, Ohio, plant. More than 100 Fresh Mark employees working at the Salem plant were subject to arrest for immigration violations, the caption reads.
A comparison of the manipulated and original images shows that the agents and the detained man are in the same positions and the backgrounds are identical. However, in the edited version, the label on the man’s hard hat is missing, and a “Latinos for Trump” logo was superimposed onto the shirt the man was wearing. Additionally, the wording on the ICE agent’s clothing was changed from “POLICE HSI” to “POLICE ICE.”
