Left-wing accounts across social media are widely circulating an altered image to spread a false claim that the Trump administration is rounding up Latino Trump supporters as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation operations.
This week, the Photoshopped picture, which depicts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apparently arresting a man sporting "Latinos for Trump 2024" merch, made its rounds on Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Meta's Threads. English- and Spanish-speaking users shared the digitally doctored post, adding captions mocking the man in ICE custody for purportedly voting Trump back into power.
You can’t make this shit up.
— Chicano Marine 🇲🇽🇺🇸💙 (@elchicanomarine) January 28, 2025
🤦🏻♂️ pic.twitter.com/bABermRFx8
Venezuela-based satire site El Chigüire Bipolar, which translates to "Bipolar Capybara" in English, published an entire article on a fictitious story surrounding this image, with it featured as the thumbnail.
According to a Spanish-to-English translation, the piece—titled "Latinos for Trump rally interrupted by ICE raid"—jokes about ICE agents breaking up a monthly meeting of the pro-Trump Latino group. One made-up ICE agent, "an expert in Roman salutes," is quoted as saying that they managed to capture about 50 members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, "who we easily identified thanks to the excess melanin in their skin, as well as their excellent rhythm for dancing merengue, typical of terrorists. They will be deported along with the rest of these criminals who dared not to be Caucasian in the glorious United States of America."
It's not known if the satirical outlet is the editor of the image in question or simply used it.
According to stock image suppliers Alamy and Getty Images, the photograph in its original form shows that the detained man did not have any text on the back of his T-shirt. Another angle of the man's arrest, taken on the same date but moments before, shows his plain apparel without any writing on it. Moreover, those were Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers handcuffing him. Whoever edited it also changed the velcro patches on their tactical vests to say "ICE" instead of "HSI," although HSI is the investigative arm of ICE.
In fact, the fake photo originates from 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)'s Visual Information Distribution Service database. The man wearing a hard hat, indeed, was nabbed during a real ICE workplace raid. A photographer for ICE captured the worker's arrest when HSI special agents were raiding a major meatpacking plant in Salem, Ohio.
According to an ICE press release, on June 19, 2018, federal authorities executed a search warrant on Fresh Mark's property as part of a year-long investigation into whether the meat processing-and-packaging facility was knowingly hiring illegal aliens and if many of these workers, mostly Guatemalan nationals, were using fraudulent IDs belonging to U.S. citizens.
ICE executes federal criminal search warrants at Fresh Mark, 146 arrested on immigration violations https://t.co/eH0NyKQlu6 pic.twitter.com/KuMSg3UiLx
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) June 21, 2018
HSI agents arrested more than 140 suspects who were working at the meat processor for allegedly violating U.S. immigration law. "Nos cayó la tormenta," one of the workers told The Guardian's U.S. news section, meaning "The storm descended on us."
Unlawful labor is a key incentive attracting illegal aliens across America's southern border, said Steve Francis, the HSI special agent in charge at the time. "Businesses who knowingly harbor and hire illegal aliens as a business model must be held accountable for their actions."
This massive bust notably happened during Trump's first term.
Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, meanwhile, continues to intensify just a few weeks into his tenure 2.0.
Much to the left's chagrin, Trump had gained ground among Latino voters this election cycle, capturing more of the Latino vote than he did in 2020 (32 percent) and 2016 (28 percent). According to Associated Press projections, Trump broke a Latino voting record for a Republican candidate, besting George W. Bush's 2004 performance in this demographic.
Latino male voters shifted dramatically toward Trump in 2024, per an Edison Research exit poll. In 2020, Joe Biden won among Latino men by 23 percentage points (59 percent to Trump's 36 percent). In 2024 against Biden's replacement, Kamala Harris, Trump won them by 10 points (54 percent to 44 percent), a change of 33 points on the margin and an extraordinary swing to the right for a voting bloc in a four-year period.