STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

What We Know

Did a TikTok video shared widely in July 2025 accurately claim that shackled bodies found in Europe were deportees from the U.S. that ICE had dropped into the ocean from planes? Here's what we know: Lead Stories has so far found no evidence to support that shocking claim. Spain's Civil Guard told Lead Stories that "ICE deportations flights from the U.S. are not one of the working theories of what could have happened", confirming initial media reports that described the deceased as migrants from North Africa who had died while attempting to cross into the country on boats. Talking to Lead Stories, an ICE spokesperson said the claim as "clearly false".

The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on June 30, 2025, under the caption:

I'm not going to shut my mouth.

The speaker says:

Guys, they're throwing the deportees out of the planes and into the ocean. No, this is not a drill. No, this is not fear mongering. They're shackling people, flying out into open ocean and throwing them out. Okay, the flight patterns -- there's people tracking them on this app, the flights going out with the deportees, watching them go out to open ocean and circle back. A family in Italy saw five shackled bodies wash up on the shore...

This is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:

(Source: TikTok screenshot by Lead Stories)

Lead Stories has not found any evidence to support the claim that ICE was executing immigrants by throwing them off deportation flights, nor to support the subsidiary claims that flight trackers showed clear evidence of deportation flights circling around over large bodies of water, or that shackled bodies found in Europe in the summer of 2025 were the victims of such actions.

A search across Google News (archived here) for the words "shackled", "bodies" and "Italy" yielded no relevant results.

However, the speaker may have been referring to a different story in Spain. According to regional daily Diario de Mallorca (archived here), over the course of roughly a month in the summer of 2025, at least five bodies, discovered with their hands and feet tied, washed ashore on the Balearic Islands.

The news outlet reported that local law enforcement believed that the deceased could have been migrants from North Africa who had been attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat.

On July 7, 2025, a spokesperson for Spain's Civil Guard, which is the body investigating the case, confirmed to Lead Stories via email:

According with ongoing investigaciton ICE deportations flights from the U.S. are not one of the working theories of what could have happened, and everything points to ties between the deceased to North Africa.

Previously, on July 3, 2025, an ICE spokesperson told Lead Stories via email:

No, these posts are clearly false. It is concerning that these outlandish lies are spreading on social media platforms and people believe it.

On the claim that flight trackers had zeroed in on deportation flights that had circled around in the middle of the ocean, Tom Cartwright (archived here), a retired financial executive who has been tracking deportation flights since Trump's first presidency and whose data has been used by major media organizations (archived here), told Lead Stories via email on July 2, 2025:

Based on my work and observations this is all garbage.

I see all deportation flight paths and - NO.

Lead Stories reached out to the Spanish Civil Guard about their investigation into the discovery of the corpses, but we did not receive an immediate response.

If we obtain any further relevant information, we will update this story accordingly.

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