| Factchecked
Immigration lawyer talks AZ’s status as ground zero for immigration
Delia Salvatierra discusses Donald Trump’s plans to deport undocumented migrants and Arizona’s status as ground zero for immigration on Nov. 21, 2024.
One day after Republican Donald Trump’s victory In the presidential elections of November 5, 2024, we detected videos and TikTok that supposedly showed a massive flight of migrants from the United States, using old photos or videos of lines at airports without any relation to that supposed flight.
But the narrative has not stopped: at least since November 16, 2024, similar content has circulated on TikTok, videos that use the same audio with a voice that says: “How sad today, it has been revealed that millions of people , undocumented and citizens, are leaving the United States because of the anti-immigrant laws that Donald Trump wants to sign.”
For example, this video posted on November 17 of 2024 uses that audio and states that “the United States could be left without immigrant workers since today it was revealed that they are leaving the country” (sic). However, the image shown in the video, in reality, was taken at Tijuana International Airport, Mexico, in December 2022 when a storm in that country caused the cancellation of flights. The disinforming video had more than 968 thousand views by November 21, 2024.
This audio has been reused at least 10 times by other TikTok accounts that have also superimposed images of planes and airports taken out of context. These disinforming contents, by November 21, 2024, accumulated more than 1.6 million views.
This is not the first time that the disinforming technique of using the same audio multiple times in different videos has been used. In 2023 at Factchequeado we detect more than 250 videos that took the same audio from a Latin influencer to misinform on the deportation priorities of the Joe Biden administration. That year we also denied videos of alleged migrants fleeing Florida after it was approved SB 1718.
Anonymous accounts seek to generate panic and confuse
According to several videos we detected on TikTok, the deportations of the Trump presidency are supposedly going to begin before he comes to power, while other content falsely claims that Trump could give work permits to all migrants and, at the same time , Trump’s deportation plans would have been canceled. Does it make sense? Obviously not. But the intention of these accounts is provoke fearconfuse you, the generate strong emotions to go viral.
For example, in Factchequeado we found a video posted on TikTok on November 18, 2024 which states that “on January 6 [de 2025] “The deportations begin.” But on January 6, Biden will still be in the Presidency. Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.
We also found on TikTok at least 3 disinforming videos published since November 11, 2024 that claimed that Trump was going to give work permits in 2025 to “immigrant workers”. Since then we have detected videos similar circulating on this social network.
At the same time, we detect a video with more than 99,000 views which states “the deportations that Donald Trump had planned are over” (sic).
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