It’s fact-check time. A photograph of a Chicago toddler being zip-tied has been doing the rounds on the Internet all week. The popular claim was that the little kid was arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as the ICE. However, the claims are absolutely untrue. In case you missed the picture, this is the one that has been going insanely viral, and it led toa massive uproar from people.
A Toddler being detained and zip-tied as part of an early morning ICE raid in Chicago pic.twitter.com/PkDWUip40n
— EssenViews (@essenviews) October 5, 2025
After the pictures started circulating, users on X started bombarding the platform with comments like, “This should have headlined every news program on the air. It’s criminal abuse of a child” and some that read, “The only way you get to the point where you zip tie a toddler’s hands behind their back is if you don’t see them as human.”
However, after much ado, several fact-checkers and news outlets stepped up to clarify that all the claims being made are false and that the aforementioned clip is not from an ICE arrest of a Chicago toddler.
Turns out the image of the Chicago toddler circulating online happens to be a screenshot of a TikTok clip that was posted on June 19, 2024. In the video, a police officer is seen jokingly arresting his toddler.
FRANCE 24 English did a fact check on the video during an episode of Truth or Fake, and they stated that “the footage shared in these posts was filmed in 2024 by a father playing cops and robbers with his son.”
Snopes shared the original footage, clarifying that it was originally posted on TikTok on an account called “YaFavoriteOfficer.” The video that was from a father-son’s playtime was accompanied by the hashtag “jokes” and the caption on it read, “WHEN YOU CATCH HIM OUTSIDE AND HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE ON HOUSE ARREST” along with LOL emoji. The video, which was posted last year, went instantly viral and it got over 25,000 comments and over 1.5 million likes.
Several content creators on Instagram reposted the original video, with a story that was far from reality.
Meanwhile, Trump, who previously called Chicago a “war zone,” received massive backlash after he compared the region to Cairo in Egypt. Adding how people can walk freely in a park in Egypt without any fear, but cannot do so in Chicago, Donald Trump said, “There were 4,000 shootings … murders … over a fairly short period of time.”
Last week, Trump also shared a video titled, “Chicago is in chaos.” Accompanying the over-the-top video clip was a voiceover by Trump, in which he took a jibe at the local Democratic leaders.
However, it was later reported by the news publication The Daily Beast that the clips used in the video shared by Trump and the White House on X are actually old footage of ICE raids in Florida. The biggest giveaway was the palm trees, which are not found in Chicago. “The Daily Beast can reveal that much of the footage was actually filmed in April in Florida, the state home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence—with a big giveaway being that it features palm trees, which are not known to grow in Chicago,” the report stated.
