On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed the executive order “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “to ensure the efficient and expedited removal of aliens from the United States.”
Recently, images depicting Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) agents seizing a little girl have gone viral across social media platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram, and Threads.
John Pavolovitz, an activist and former pastor, shared the image on Facebook. “We cannot accept this,” he said. “People who hurt/cause trauma to kids are evil,” posted an account on Threads with more than 20,000 followers, “Liberals are cool,” along with the image. “This evil runs deep in MAGA paternalism.” The X account “Republicans Against MAGA” tweeted the image, adding, “Christians ok with this?”
The proprietor of the X account “Live on the Chat,” a man named Roberto, told The Dispatch Fact Check that he generated the photo in a prompt on X’s built-in AI tool, Grok. The user then tweeted the image in multiple posts, including one he captioned, “So cruel to target children.” Roberto also confirmed to Snopes, another fact-checking outlet, that he created the image.
An artificial intelligence (AI) detection expert who analyzed the image highlighted some details that signal an image is generated. “There are some structural defects on, for example, the girl’s shoulder that are telltale signs of AI-generation,” explained Hany Farid, a professor at UCLA’s School of Information and founder of the AI deepfake detection company GetReal Labs. And, although his models rated the image as “suspicious,” though not concretely AI-generated, Farid noted other inconsistencies between the viral image and public photographs of ICE agents: While the back of the agent’s shirt in the viral image merely reads, “ICE,” most photos of agents show their backs reading “Police ICE,” “Police Federal Agent,” “Police Enforcement and Removal Operations,” or just “Police.”
The Dispatch Fact Check also ran the photo through several AI detection programs. Hive Moderation, an online detector tool made by the AI company Hive, determined the viral image is “99.9 percent likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.” Similarly, the image analysis AI company Sight Engine rated the likelihood that the photo was AI-generated to be 99 percent.
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.
With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere.