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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke March 13, 2020

No, ICE didn’t arrest the mayor of Los Angeles

If Your Time is short

  • Immigrations and Customs Enforcement didn’t arrest Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
 

You might expect a website called Dachshund Daily to have, we don’t know, puppy photos, or live coverage of the wiener dog races that happen every year in Buda, Texas.

Lovers of this long-bodied breed will find no such reporting here. 

Instead, there’s a fake story about ICE arresting the mayor of Los Angeles and a bunch of links that lead to ads. 

"Joseph Barron, the praised chairman of Los Angeles County, was driven away from his office in binds today by ICE specialists and accused of harboring outlaws from the law with his choice to give undocumented settlers shelter under his ‘Asylum City’ assignment," says the story, which sounds very much like it was treated to a few spins through Google Translate. "Barron appeared to see his problem as interesting, as he grinned and yelled ‘ATTICA! ATTICA!’ while being directed to a holding up vehicle."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

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The mayor of Los Angeles is, of course, not "Joseph Barron." It’s Eric Garcetti, and he wasn’t arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

It seems this story originated on a self-described satire website, though that version described the arrest of Josiah Barron, "the celebrated mayor of Los Angeles County."

We rate this story Pants on Fire.

 

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No, ICE didn’t arrest the mayor of Los Angeles

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