Is there evidence the Coca-Cola Company called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on their own workers in Texas and did several of them get deported as a result? No, that's not true: Online posts and videos making this claim lack details about the concrete place and time this supposedly happened and they offer up differing versions of events. A spokesperson from the Coca-Cola Company told Lead Stories "the accusations are false". The online rumors possibly got started after a mixup of old news about 2021 the closure of a bottling plant in Texas with more recent news about a boycott campaign that included Coca-Cola.
Claims
There were several videos making claims about ICE and Coca-Cola, for example this one (archived here) uploaded on February 8, 2025. It was captioned:
So apparently Coca-Cola is being boycotted? It's crazy when 1 found out why. #cocacola #boycott #cocacolaboycott #really? #ice #fyp
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun Feb 9 18:44:53 2025 UTC)
The speaker in the video said, among other things, that Coca-Cola did:
...funnel a whole lot of illegal immigrants, who you hired, into a room and lied to them about how there was a meeting. And then you had them all cornered by ICE.
Another video (archived here) featured a screenshot of a snippet of text that read:
Ah, Coca-Cola - the global icon of refreshment, family gatherings, and, apparently, backstabbing its own employees. In a move so rich with irony it should be bottled and sold alongside their signature beverages, Coca-Cola has allegedly fired over a thousand Latino workers at a Texas bottling plant and then had the audacity to report them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Yes, nothing quite says "refreshing corporate loyalty" like kicking your workforce to the curb and ensuring they have an express ticket out of the country.
That same text appeared on February 6, 2025 as part of a longer article on opamusic.com (archived here).
Another popular video (archived here) claimed Coca-Cola had apologized for what allegedly happened:
Why is Coca Cola apologizing, somebody help me? Why are they apologizing? The deed has been done. You called ICE, you called immigration on your workers because you wanted them gone.
The video also featured a text overlay that said "Coca-Cola exposes its own immigrant workers. Immigration officials have deported them all."
Yet another video (archived here) said in a text caption:
When you find out Coca-Cola called ICE on their own workers while they were on the clock
There was also a video (archived here) that purported to show the arrests happening, but the footage was clearly AI generated, showing people dissolving into thin air and having odd lettering on the door of the truck and along the truckbed typical of AI video. It also absurdly showed an ICE truck with Coca-Cola branding on it.
(Source: TikTok screenshots taken on Sun Feb 9 21:53:27 2025 UTC)
A longer video (archived here) showed a speaker who said:
Coca Cola is in trouble for laying off thousands of Latin American workers at Cerberus bottling plant in Texas, but that's not the end of it. What's made it worse is that they turned over their own employees to ICE after terminating them.
Lack of evidence & contradictions
Some of the videos seem to contradict each other. You can't fit "over a thousand" or "thousands" of employees into a single room for a meeting to entrap them for a raid. Some of the videos say there was a raid during working hours, others say the employees were turned over to ICE *after* they were terminated.
Lead Stories checked Google News using the phrases "ICE" and "Coca Cola" (archived here) to see if any news websites had recently reported on such a story. That turned up only one artice on MSN syndicated from Distractify (archived here) that cast doubt on the rumor and no recent news reports about any ICE raids involving Coca-Cola or their workers.
We also checked Google for results mentioning "Cerberus" and "bottling" and "Texas" and found no trace of a bottling company by that name or in such a location.
Denial
Lead Stories contacted the Coca-Cola Company by email to inquire about the rumors and videos going around that claimed the company had called ICE on their own workers. A company spokesperson provided us with following statement:
We can confirm the accusations in the video are false.
Possible confusion
The Google News search results refered to earlier did bring up a February 7, 2025 story from Fox 5 - KUSI News (archived here) that mentioned a boycott action called "Latino Freeze" (archived here) that sought to boycott certain companies (including Coca-Cola) because they allegedly "Scaled back DEI".
A search for news stories about Coca-Cola bottling plants closing in Texas brought up a 2021 article (archived here) about a closure in Grand Prairie, Texas involving 76 workers. But that story didn't mention immigrants or ICE.
Further updates
Lead Stories reached out by email to DHS and ICE, we will update this story once we receive a reply.
If you have a concrete and verifiable tip about a place or time where ICE supposedly arrested Coca-Cola workers and you have evidence, please send it to [email protected]. We will update this story if it checks out.
