Demystifying 5 viral images of the migrant caravan

A group of Honduran migrants traveling from Mexico to the United States has received considerable attention in recent days, including a litany of false, misleading and unproven statements circulating on social media.

Part of this misinformation has been fueled by statements by US officials, including President Trump, who have spread an unproven rumor that "criminals and strangers from the Middle East" were part of the group. (He later admitted that there was "no evidence" to support his statement.) Other rumors were shared on Facebook, Twitter and Twitter. other social media platforms.

We will take a closer look at five widely shared images of the caravan, as well as the reasons why the statements made about them should not be considered as such.

Images of wounded police officers became viral after being posted in right-wing Facebook groups, such as Trump Train, Make America's Great Again and the Diamond and Silk fan page. They also had thousands of retweets on Twitter. The caption on a Facebook article said: "The members of this caravan are brutalizing the Mexican police as they try to FORCER to enter Mexico."

Several Mexican police officers, as well as migrants and journalists, were injured in caravan incidents, according to sources citing US and Mexican officials.

But these are old photos unrelated to the caravan.

A widely shared photo, of a bloody policeman, was taken in 2012 during a student protest in Mexico City and featured on the website of the European Pressphoto Agency.

A second widely shared image of a policeman with a bloody nose, appeared in a 2011 article about a clash in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, according to Factcheck.org, who examined the images. And a third picture, of a wounded policeman, can be attributed to a 2014 Mexican Press Article events in the Guerrero region of Mexico.

Yet the photos have been shared tens of thousands of times, including Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court, on Facebook.

But a reverse image search indicates that the photos in the publication do not come from the caravan. The first picture, of migrants sitting at the top of a train, was taken in 2013, according to the Associated Press website.

The image of the tweet, which was later shared on Facebook, received thousands of actions after being posted by several large groups, including one for followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

A video showed groups of migrants receiving what appeared to be money. the video, whose origin is unknown, was posted on Twitter by President Trump and his representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican. Mr Gaetz suggested that the video evidence that the migrants had links to George Soros, the liberal billionaire who is an integral part of the right-wing conspiracy theories.

Mr Gaetz made several mistakes in describing the video, including saying that it was shot in Honduras (it was shot in Guatemala), and later tweeted a partial explanation, stating that he thought the video had been shot in Honduras because a Honduran official had sent it. The video has not been removed and has been viewed millions of times.

Monday, a bomb was delivered to Mr. Soros's house.

The images – which seem to have been taken from video filmed by Anne Laurent, a freelance reporter in Mexico who covered the trailer's story for ABC News – were shared on The Deplorable's and other Facebook's right-wing pages with captions such as "The proponents of the DNC give money to create caravans. " shared on Twitter with insinuating tweets Mr. Soros and other "globalist bankers and activists" have been involved in the transportation of migrants.

No information links trucks to American groups or individuals. Open Society Foundations, the organization founded by Mr. Soros, has denied any involvement.

Claim: Caravan members burn American flags

Verdict: poorly labeled / unproven

An article widely shared on Facebook claimed to show three photographs of migrants in the caravan burning an American flag as they approached the United States. The post has been shared more than 19,000 times on Facebook.

But According to Snopes, the fact-checking site, none of the images relate to caravan members and none have been taken this year.

Reverse image searches reveal that the first image was taken at an anti-Trump rally in New Mexico in 2016 – it shows a protester burning a Trump banner, not an American flag. The second was taken in London during a protest in 2010 and the third at a street protest in 2016, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.