Spanish-language misinformation on Los Angeles immigration protests push a familiar theme

A surge of false or misleading posts, photographs and videos about the Los Angeles protests have been circulating on social media, with many of those shared among Latinos — mostly in Spanish — tying the protesters to socialist or communist governments.

One post on X with over 600,000 views claims that in the U.S., immigration protest groups have links to “the Venezuelan mafia,” the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Morena Party, the left-wing ruling party of Mexico. But the post doesn’t specify any groups and doesn’t give evidence of this.

The narrative echoes similar falsehoods that circulated during the 2020 George Floyd protests and the 2024 pro-Palestinian student protests on university campuses.

Parts of Los Angeles and other cities across the country have seen protests against immigration raids as President Donald Trump’s administration enforces a hard-line immigration policy. Dramatic scenes where cars, including Waymo taxis, were set on fire and protesters confronted law enforcement by throwing objects at them have filled social media feeds.

While some far-left groups have encouraged and even glorified violence in the protests, the onslaught of posts, mostly in Spanish, appears to be an attempt to link protests against immigrant raids to leftist Latin American governments, and the posts show support for President Donald Trump and his policies.

“Though there is always inaccurate information swirling around, there has certainly been a spike since the Los Angeles protests took off,” said Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, president of We Are Más, which focuses on social impact consulting. “In the past we would find false or inaccurate information more hidden in platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp. Now it’s more in the open and more easily found on social media and online publications.”

The falsehoods revive prior conspiracies that the protests are a planned provocation from leftist governments and not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids. On his platform, Truth Social, Trump has baselessly claimed protesters are “Paid Insurrectionists!”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have been targets of some of the misinformation that seeks to link them to communism.

A fake picture of Bass with Cuba’s late leader Fidel Castro, with his arm around her has circulated on social media. The original picture showed Castro with the late activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Bass does have some…