Were Rep. Nancy Pelosi's granddaughters arrested trying to smuggle narcotics into the United States? No, that's not true: The story originated on a Facebook page with a satire disclaimer. A search of news archives showed that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate.
The claim appeared in a July 16, 2025, post on Facebook (archived here), which contained a photo of Pelosi and a photo of two women being arrested, along with the following embedded text:
Nancy Pelosi's granddaughters were busted at the southern border smuggling 70 pounds of illegal narcotics.
They thought that "since they're Americans" they'd be waved through.
"They weren't even trying to hide it. They just drove right up with a duffel bag in the back seat."
Unfortunately, their misguided sense of privilege will cost them their freedom.
This is what it looked like at the time of publication:
(Image source: Screenshot of post by facebook.com/ALLODSatire)
The rumor was false. The page that published the post, "America's Last Line of Defense", is part of a network of pages and websites which describe their output as satirical.
"America's Last Line of Defense" features the following disclaimer (archived here):
Nothing on this page is real.
The website associated with the page, Dunning-Kruger Times, contains the following disclaimer (archived here):
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.
Despite originating as self-described satire, the story was shared in earnest (archived here) without "satire" disclaimers, in the ensuing days.
In order to ensure that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate, Lead Stories searched Google News and Yahoo! News (archived here and here) for the phrases "Pelosi", "granddaughters" and "smuggling", but found no relevant entries.
Finally, the photograph of two women being arrested was taken in Colombia in 2004 (archived here), not on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2025, and shows the arrest of two suspects in the shooting of a prominent soccer coach.
Lead Stories has previously debunked a similar fake America's Last Line of Defense story which claimed that Pelosi's daughters, rather than granddaughters, had been arrested for drug smuggling.
