Is former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell accurately credited with a "lazy immigrants" quote often shared on social media? No, that's not true: The quote was first published on social media in 2019 by a user on X who acknowledged having written it. There is no record of the former general publicly sharing this sentiment. The Foreign Service Institute told Lead Stories that none of Powell's official remarks available on the Department of State's archived website include this quotation.
A version of the claim appeared in a post on Threads on October 29, 2024, (archived here) with a caption that read:
Touché.
The post featured a photo of Powell above a quote that read:
I don't want to hear about 'lazy immigrants' from a race of people who enslaved a whole other race of people to do all the work they didn't want to do
This is how the post looked on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken Tue Oct 29 12:02:36 UTC 2025)
The photo of Powell alongside the quote implies that he said this.
In an email to Lead Stories received on February 4, 2025, the Foreign Service Institute wrote that there is no record of Powell publicly stating this quote, writing:
We cannot authoritatively confirm or deny that Powell said the quoted remarks because there exists no comprehensive record documenting everything he ever said. The best our office can do is try to find the quote among the records of his remarks that were created and preserved by the Department of State.
The Department of State can confirm that none of Powell's official remarks available on the Department's archived website include this quotation.
A Google keyword search (archived here) returned a post on Facebook that included a screenshot of the quote attributed to a username @xziondestinyx on the platform then known as Twitter.
A search of the @xziondestinyx account on X, whose username is now @zionnndestinyyy, showed that the quote was first published on January 19, 2019 (archive here). A live embed of the post on X is shown below:
I don't wanna hear about 'lazy immigrants ' from a race of people who enslaved a whole other race of people to do all the work they didn't want to do
-- Zion Destiny ~ ⁷ (@zionnndestinyyy) January 16, 2019
In a comment to the original post, @xziondestinyx acknowledged having made the quote, writing:
See the funny thing is I never even said white people invented slavery in this tweet . Why did y'all feel the need to get all defensive , jump down my throat and bring up every other race that engaged in slavery ??
Lead Stories contacted @zionnndestinyyy over X for comment on whether they created the quote. We will update this article if a response is received.
The first iteration of this quote being credited to Powell that Lead Stories found was posted to Facebook on April 19, 2019 -- three months after it was first shared to X by @zionnndestinyyy.
The post featured a photo of Powell and the quote, implying that the former politician created it. Below is a live embed of that post:
Lead Stories also contacted the Office of the Historian and America's Promise Alliance, which Powell, who died in 2021, formerly chaired. This article will be updated accordingly if either respond.
At the time this was written, other fact checking agencies like Reuters, Check Your Fact and Snopes had also reviewed the same claim.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks involving Colin Powell can be read here.
