These viral videos and photos do not show the deportation of Indian migrants from the U.S
On 20 January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” introducing strict immigration measures. As part of this, the US began deporting illegal immigrants. Amidst this, several photos and videos are going viral on social media (here, here, and here), claiming that Indians identified as illegal immigrants are being deported to India with their hands and feet shackled. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Visuals show Indian immigrants in the U.S. being deported to India with their hands and feet shackled.
Fact: The viral visuals do not show the deportation of Indian immigrants from the U.S. The first photo features deported individuals from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, and Honduras. The second photo shows migrants deported to Guatemala. The viral video captures officials escorting a group onto a C-17 Globemaster III at Fort Bliss, Texas, on 23 January. However, the first deportation flight carrying Indian migrants left Texas on 04 February 2025 and arrived in Amritsar on 05 February 2025, and people on this flight were also seen shackled. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
Photo 1
We noticed “Hidalgo, Texas” written in the viral photo. To verify the claim, we performed a Google Lens search on a screenshot of the image, which led to a video (archived) shared by @viralnewsnyc, a verified X user, on 30 January 2025 which was before the deportation of Indian illegal migrants from the US on 04 February 2025. The video was captioned, “Border patrol walking them right back into Mexico.”
Building on this, we conducted a keyword search and found a video report from the local news outlet KRGV (archived) and an article from the Daily Mail (archived). The same individuals seen in the viral video also appear in these reports. Additionally, a Reuters (archived) image gallery features a photo of the same curly-haired man standing at the front of the queue in the KRGV video. According to these reports, the individuals were deported to Mexico. KRGV stated, “One was a Mexican citizen. The others were from Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, and Honduras.”
The same individuals seen in the viral photo also appear in the Daily Mail report, as shown in the comparison below.
Photo 2
A reverse image search of the viral photo led to a news article from The Independent (archived), which featured the same image. According to the article, published on 30 January 2025, a group of 80 migrants was being deported from Texas, USA, to Guatemala on the same day. However, there was no mention of Indian migrants.
The Independent credited the photo to the Associated Press (AP). A search on the AP website confirmed that the image was taken on 30 January 2025 in El Paso, Texas. The description stated that it depicts migrants, handcuffed and preparing to be deported to Guatemala, aboard a military plane.
Additionally, we also found an X post by PIB Fact Check (archived) dated 05 February 2025, clarifying that the viral photo shows migrants deported to Guatemala, not Indian migrants.
Video 1
A reverse image search of the viral video, which shows individuals walking one by one with their hands tied, led us to a report by The Independent (archived) published on 28 January 2025. The video in this report matches frames from the viral clip. According to The Independent, officials escorted the group onto a C-17 Globemaster III at Fort Bliss, Texas, on 23 January 2025 as part of an operation coordinated with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Below is a comparison between the viral clip and the video shared by The Independent.
On the other hand, we found the original footage of the deportation of Indians on X (archived), posted by Michael W. Banks, the 27th Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, on 05 February 2025. In his post, he confirmed the successful deportation of illegal immigrants to India, marking the longest deportation flight using military transport. Even Indians who were deported were seen shackled in this video.
To sum up, while Indian immigrants who were deported from the U.S. on 04 February 2025 were seen in shackles, the viral visuals are not related to their deportation.