Does a viral video document ICE agents seizing undocumented children from foster care to deport them? No, that's not true: It's a montage of unrelated clips about alleged juvenile crimes, disorderly behavior at school and other situations with no apparent connection to immigration roundups. The video's narrator provides no dates, places, case numbers or other information to permit independent corroboration of its claims. The officers seen in the clips show no ICE badges nor ICE patches on their uniforms.
The video is offered as proof in a June 11, 2025 TikTok video (archived here) on the newshr19 account with the following description: "Foster Children Removed for Deportation." The voice-over began:
It's time to speak up. ICE is now removing undocumented foster children from their foster homes ... for deportation.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Image Source: TikTok.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Clip origins show this video does not show ICE actions, much less seizure of minors from foster care
Here's a series of screenshot matchups that show on the left a scene from the video being fact checked and on the right side, the origin of that clip.
The opening clip of the video being fact checked shows a uniformed security guard or police officer handcuffing a toddler. Lead Stories found that exact scene in a 2025 TikTok video, (archived here) clearly marked as a humor piece about an officer "arresting" his toddler for leaving the house.
(Source: TikTok.com screenshots arranged into comparison graphic by Lead Stories.)
The match to the clip at 00:05 of the video being fact checked - of a handcuffed boy with a mohawk - is found in a YouTube channel's pirated copy, posted in 2017, of a video that has since been taken down, according to a note on the "Coyfish" channel.
(Source: YouTube.com and TikTok.com screenshots arranged into comparison graphic by Lead Stories.)
One prominent match to the clip at 00:06 of the video being fact checked - of a crying boy in a plaid shirt being handcuffed - is from a 2017 episode of Inside Edition, (archived here) a syndicated news magazine show broadcast on CBS. The story details how a 9-year-old boy was taken into custody after a fight and uses video taken by the boy's father as the boy is led away from his elementary school in Franklin, Indiana. The shoulder patches on the officers appear to match local police and not ICE insignia.
(Source: YouTube.com and InsideEdition.com screenshots arranged into comparison graphic by Lead Stories.)
Lead Stories will update this fact check with other video clip matches as they are found.
Searching for the origin of the clips, Lead Stories did a keyword search of Google News' index of thousands of news sites (archived here). We found multiple reports about detention of a fugitive Honduran 17-year-old in Florida, none featuring video that matches the clips in the video that's the subject of this fact check. The Google News search also turned up reports about a Trump administration program to check the welfare of unaccompanied and undocumented minor children, hundreds of thousands of whom were placed in foster care in recent years. In those news articles, ICE officials said undocumented foster children are vulnerable to traffickers and denied immigration activists' claims that the priority was deporting those children, not checking their safety. That controversy would be related to the video that's the subject of this fact check, but none of the news reports about the welfare checks included video matching the clips that are the subject of this fact check.
Snopes, a fact checking agency, examined the case of the Honduran teen in a June, 2025 fact check, but did not report finding widespread ICE seizure of undocumented children from foster care. That fact check did not include video matching the clips in the TikTok video that's the subject of this fact check.
Lead Stories keyword search of Yahoo News' (archived here) index turned up multiple links to the Snopes fact check and to stories about the ICE welfare checks on undocumented minors in foster care, but no videos matching the clips in the video that's the subject of this fact check.
As part of our search for video related to the claims made in the TikTok video, Lead Stories reached out to ICE's media relations office to ask if any such detentions or seizures have taken place, which might allow a more precise search for video clips. We will update this fact check, as relevant, when they reply.
Readers interested in other Lead Stories fact checks about ICE will find them collected here.
