White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

Dale continued, “The White House image altered the actual photo to wrongly make it seem like the defendant was sobbing. Asked for comment, the White House sent a link to a spokesperson’s X post that said, ‘Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue.’”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/white-house-accused-prominent-observers-190942053.html?



White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest
Guardian analysis shows images are the same, with Nekima Levy Armstrong looking composed in original but sobbing after alteration
The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by attorney general Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found.

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul ICE office. Bondi announced the arrests on social media Thursday morning.

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem posted an image of Armstrong’s arrest at 10.21am on Thursday, less than an hour after Bondi’s announcement. The image shows a law enforcement agent, face blurred out, escorting Armstrong, who appears to be handcuffed. Armstrong, dressed in all black, appears to be composed in the picture.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/white-house-ice-protest-arrest-altered-image

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. The White House has confirmed its official X account posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reported, "The White House has confirmed its official X account posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota after interrupting a service at a church where an ICE official appears to be a pastor."

— Rebecca I. Allen (@rebeccaallen.bsky.social) 2026-01-22T20:01:40.408Z

Link to tweet

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

2. They're like fucking children

[newdeal2]

6. They're plain evil

This is all propaganda that makes it easier to convince 50% of the population to ignore the truth.

[allegorical oracle]

3. Don't the WH clowns have better things to do? Object to my taxes paying them to spend time

mocking the U.S. public.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. MaddowBlog-White House pushes manipulated image of arrest of Minnesota civil rights attorney

As one prominent political scientist summarized, “We are at Stalinesque levels of propaganda.”

We’re all accustomed to White House deceptions, but pushing an AI-manipulated image — and then bragging about it — is qualitatively worse than the usual nonsense.

When there’s no real difference between the White House and your annoying friend on facebook who pushes AI trash, there’s a problem.

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-01-23T18:15:00.053Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-pushes-manipulated-image-of-arrest-of-minnesota-civil-rights-attorney

Four days later, federal agents arrested three of those involved with the protest, including a civil rights attorney named Nekima Levy Armstrong.

That the White House celebrated Levy Armstrong’s arrest was not surprising. What mattered, however, is how the White House celebrated the development. The Associated Press reported:

On its official X page, the White House shared an image of Nekima Levy Armstrong that showed her in tears with her arms behind her back, standing in front of someone wearing a badge around their neck.

The problem? Levy Armstrong wasn’t actually crying. The image was manipulated to make the moment more dramatic than it actually was. … The original image, which shows Levy Armstrong with a neutral expression, was altered to make her appear emotional.

A related report in The New York Times noted that the newspaper ran the image through an artificial intelligence detection system that concluded the White House’s version of the photo “showed signs of manipulation.”....

The image of Levy Armstrong was qualitatively different: It was designed to mislead. Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, noted via Bluesky, “This is the first example I’ve seen of an American government using AI to meaningfully misrepresent actual events with the intent to deceive the public. We are at Stalinesque levels of propaganda.”....

But in 2026, the White House is no better than that annoying guy you went to high school with or that weird uncle who consumes conservative media all day. The president and his team, like your Facebook friends, have no qualms about spreading manipulated content without regard for accuracy.

The difference, of course, is that the White House knows it’s promoting deceptions, contributing to an information landscape in which Americans no longer know who or what to believe.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Why Trump's altered image of an anti-ICE protester crosses a new line

The Trump administration is pioneering a new frontier in propaganda — and it’s meant to crush the resistance.

Why Trump’s altered image of an anti-ICE protester crosses a new line

The Trump administration is pioneering a new frontier in propaganda — and it’s meant to crush the resistance.
www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

— Michael Markowitz (@markowitz.bsky.social) 2026-01-24T18:54:39.071Z

https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-white-house-altered-photo-ice-protester-armstrong

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a post published Thursday on X, shared an image of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong. Levy Armstrong participated in a protest inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, against crackdowns led by Immigration and Custom Enforcement. In the image, she displays a calm, neutral facial expression while she is guided by a law enforcement officer, her hands apparently handcuffed behind her back.

Just half an hour later, the White House released a similar image, but a couple of things were different. Levy Armstrong, who is Black, appears to have darker skin, and her face shows distress: She appears to be weeping, with strikingly prominent tears seemingly streaming down her face.

The second image appears to be altered, several news publications have found. The New York Times ran both images through an artificial intelligence detection system, and it concluded that the initial image was real but that the one released by the White House “showed signs of manipulation.” When asked by The Guardian whether the photo had been digitally altered, the White House sent a link to an X post by deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr that commented, “YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The Trump administration seems to have crossed yet another line in its assault on democracy. The White House has released manipulated images before, many of them generated by AI, but almost all of them are cartoonishly and obviously computer-generated. This is the first widely circulated manipulated image that I know of from the Trump administration that passes convincingly as a real photograph. This isn’t, as the administration tries to frame it, a “meme.” It’s a new frontier in propaganda, designed to deal yet another blow to functioning democracy......

While the NAACP said that Levy Armstrong and her fellow demonstrators were demonstrating peacefully, the White House claimed without providing evidence that she was “orchestrating church riots.” The altered image was meant to portray her as a cosplaying radical who broke the minute things got rough. The altered image also insinuated that Levy Armstrong regretted her actions or had lost her resolve. It invites the MAGA base to laugh at the weakness of its opponents and prompts the left to see its resistance as fragile and futile.

That the White House has done this unapologetically, even when called out by major news outlets, means we should expect this problem to continue — and likely to get worse. The problem goes far deeper than official communications about ICE, though. Under President Donald Trump, many federal government agencies cannot be expected to be truthful. But it’s equally disturbing that we have to expect that these agencies will blatantly lie in order to fulfill his quest to amass power and denigrate his enemies.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

7. Thank you for providing more context