US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations
Ice has updated the timestamps on old press releases, making them appear more recent in Google searches.
That four-day operation in Colorado? It happened in November 2010. The 123 people targeted in New Orleans? That was February of last year. Wisconsin? September 2018. There are thousands of examples of this throughout all 50 states – Ice press releases that have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago. Some, such as the arrest of “44 absconders” in Nebraska, go back as far as 2008.
All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: “Updated: 01/24/2025”.
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