Photo purporting to show U.S. immigration officer grabbing girl at school is AI-generated
Originator says image was created using Grok
CLAIM
A photo purporting to show a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer grabbing a crying girl was shared on social media on January 24.
BACKGROUND
Efforts to crack down on illegal immigration were ramped up in the days following President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
Trump signed several executive orders on immigration in the first week of his second presidency, encompassing several measures to increase border security and deportations.
The policy changes included the deployment of more troops to U.S. borders, empowering authorities to remove migrants who entered legally during President Joe Biden’s administration and clearing the way for immigration officers to make more arrests.
A new policy for the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a previous “sensitive” location policy, allowing officers to enter places of worship, healthcare facilities and schools, previously deemed areas off limits to immigration officers.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement.
In the confusion amid swift policy changes, an incident unfolded.
Local media reported that on Friday, January 24, Chicago Public Schools administrators said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at John H. Hamline Elementary in the morning but were denied the visit.
Later, the Secret Service claimed responsibility for the visit, saying that agents investigating a threat “against a government official we protect” were deployed to a house near the campus before heading over to the school.
A Secret Service spokesperson told local media that agents identified themselves to the school principal, provided business cards with their information, and left without incident.
Chicago Public Schools issued a statement on Friday night confirming that the agents were from the Secret Service, not ICE, saying there had been a mix-up.
The school authority said the agents’ identification included the name of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE and the Secret Service, causing a misunderstanding.
METHOD
A picture emerged on social media platform X, purporting to show an ICE officer grabbing a crying girl by her arms.
Another child, seemingly in distress, is partially visible behind the girl, as a blurred background appears to show an adult, possibly a teacher, in front of a colourful board.
A Google Lens image search pointed to the social media profile that goes by the name “Live On the Chat”, self-described as a “content publisher”, as the first account to share the picture.
The photo was shared with the comment, “It begins. Shame on this country”, as a reply to the following post reporting on the so-called ICE visit to the school.
“BREAKING: Today, Trump’s ICE agents showed up at a public elementary school in Chicago.
“Hamlin Elementary School, a K-8 school with 529 students—an overwhelming majority of whom are Latino—refused to let ICE agents into the building.”
Social media users reshared the image across different platforms, expressing outrage against the supposed action taken against the child, including this post by the account “REPUBLICANS AGAINST MAGA” that garnered over 10 million views, saying, “Christians ok with this?”
Several viewers expressed scepticism over the image, which showcased an exacerbated grainy effect across the lower area of the picture and an overall unnatural feel of the girl’s body and clothing.
Different online tools to moderate and analyse images returned similar results, indicating the photo was 99% likely generated by artificial intelligence.
AI-generated images have become more common on X since the deployment in 2024 of the tool Grok, an integrated chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI that can generate images.
From this analysis, we can see that the school itself confirmed there had been a mix-up and that the agents who attended the school bore identification from the Department of Homeland Security and were in fact from the Secret Service, whereas in this image, the agent is wearing clearly identifiable ICE clothing.
Furthermore, there is some obvious editing applied to the lower part of the image. AI detector software picked it up as 99% likely to have been AI-generated.
To confirm our suspicions, the ESN team contacted the uploader directly, who confirmed he generated the image through AI to illustrate the experience children at the school might have had during the supposed ICE visit
“After seeing that major news outlets in the US were reporting on X that ICE was at a children’s school in Chicago, I generated the image on Grok to visualize what that experience would be like for a child. I shared it on X and was not expecting it to spread like wildfire, but it did. Apparently it made it over to Facebook as well,” the uploader said.
“Many people who were feeling anxious and disturbed knowing that a federal government agency was going into a school to remove children without a parent or guardian. Not only is that inhumane but also traumatizing for a child,” they added.
RATING
The statements from official sources about the agents’ visit to the school and the suggestion from AI detectors that the image was artificially generated was further confirmed by the uploader, who said they generated it on Grok.
SOURCES
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: It begins. Shame on this country. [Accessed 29 Jan. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: Christians ok with this? [Accessed 29 Jan. 2025].
Homeland Security (January 21, 2025) Statement from a DHS Spokesperson on Directives Expanding Law Enforcement and Ending the Abuse of Humanitarian Parole [Accessed January 29, 2025].
Washington Post (January 24, 2025) “A Chicago school said ICE agents visited. It was the Secret Service.” [Accessed January 29, 2025].
AI image detector: Sightengine (2025). Detect AI-generated media at scale. [online] Available at: https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images [Accessed 29 Jan. 2025].
AI image detector: Hivemoderation.com. (2025). Hive Moderation. [online] Available at: https://hivemoderation.com/ai-generated-content-detection [Accessed 29 Jan. 2025].