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Los Angeles has been rocked by widespread unrest following a series of immigration raids carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. What began as demonstrations against the agency quickly escalated, with tear gas, hundreds of arrests, and clashes transforming parts of the city into scenes of violent protests.
On social media, the turmoil has fueled a wave of viral videos and dramatic claims; with many of them being misleading and unfounded.
DW Fact Check investigated a few of the widely shared ones.
Old video falsely linked to LA protests
Claim: "OVERNIGHT IN LA: Illegal Aliens light themselves on FIRE after dousing Jeep with gasoline and lighting it." This is claimed in a post on X with nearly 2.8 million views. Along with the claim, a video is shared showing a group of young people pouring gasoline on a Jeep before it explodes in flames. The same footage has been widely shared across platforms including YouTube and Instagram, all claiming it shows part of the current unrest in Los Angeles.
A viral video on X has been falsely attributed to the current protests in Los Angeles, but DW found versions of the same video published in March 2024Image: XDW Fact Check: False.
The video is not related to the current protests. It first appeared online in March 2024 and shows a street takeover in Los Angeles' Hyde Park neighborhood, unrelated to immigration raids or migrant protests.
A visible watermark in several versions of the clip links it to an Instagram account that regularly posts viral videos of car crashes, explosions, and street racing scenes. The video was published on that account on March 9, 2024.
A reverse image search leads to a Daily Mail article from March 2024 featuring screenshots from the same video and providing details of the street takeover, referring to when a group of people meet to showcase their cars and driving abilities. Searching keywords related to the Hyde Park incident in Los Angeles also yields additional reports and images from local outlets, confirming the video's original context.
Cars have been burned, vandalized, or defaced with anti-ICE slogans during the protests in LAImage: Eric Thayer/AP/picture allianceCars have been set on fire during the recent unrest in Los Angeles, as documented by photo agencies and verified news sources. However, this video does not show a current incident.
Are photos of personnel lying on the ground actually from Afghanistan?
On Sunday, June 8, National Guard personnel began arriving in Los Angeles after an order by US President Donald Trump. Images of them sleeping on the ground went viral on several platforms (like on X and Instagram) and are accompanied by different claims. Some criticize Trump for having deployed the troops without taking adequate precautions. Amongst them is California's Democratic Govenor Gavin Newsom who is a fierce critic of Trump. His post on X which includes the photos has been viewed more than 30 million times. Others allege the images are old and taken out of context.
Claim: In this post on X, with over 49,000 views at the time of writing, the claim is shared that the photographs were taken in Afghanistan in 2021. The same claim has been made in this TikTok video that has been viewed over 215,000 times.
DW Fact Check: False
Claims like this one, stating that the pictures were from Afghanistan, were denied by the 'San Francisco Chronicle'Image: XThe photos were published by the San Francisco Chronicle on June 9, 2025. The newspaper, based in California, states that they obtained the photographs.
Reverse image searches (like here and here) also do not reveal any older versions of the photographs, which means they have most likely not been published on the internet before. They do lead to similar images of National Guard personnel lying on the ground, like these taken in parking garages in the US in 2021, as news reports from that time show. Those photographs do not match the images in the claim, however, as the latter lack white walls with red stripes. Additionally, in the older news reports we see people wearing face masks, as 2021 was still the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. No masks are worn in the pictures of the current claims.
In the post's comment section, some users turned to Grok, X's AI chatbot, to try to verify the time and place the photographs were taken. Grok first indicated that they were taken in Afghanistan in 2021. Upon further questioning, Grok then suggests they may have been taken at the US Capitol in 2021, before replying it is "9 out of 10 certain the photos are from 2025," pointing to the unreliability of the answers of the AI chatbot.
We reached out to the San Francisco Chronicle to obtain more detailed information. The well-known newspaper confirmed the authenticity of the photos and shared an article in which it responds to the circulating claims showing the photographs being taken out of context. It includes a comment from the US Defense Department made to the fact checking organization Snopes, also confirming that the photographs "appear to be authentic."
