Don’t fall for video of priest turning away ICE agents from his church, it isn’t legit

Social media videos of a Catholic priest turning away Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from his church are garnering support and thousands of shares, but they were generated with artificial intelligence tools.

An Instagram video with 22,500 views as of Dec. 5, shows a passionate priest blocking ICE agents from entering his parish and giving a speech on the steps of the church, with a crowd of parishioners behind him. 

"You’re not welcome here, not today, and not on this church. I don’t know what god you worship, maybe an orange one, but my god is love," the priest says in the Dec. 1 video post. "Now go and don’t come back."

A background voice says, "Preach it bishop" and "hallelujah."

@politifact Don’t fall for it! Videos of a Catholic priest turning away ICE agents from his church aren’t real. While the posts garnered support and thousands of shares, they were generated with artificial intelligence tools. AI-video detectors determine the footage was AI-generated. We also found the user that posted the clips sells courses on how to earn money with AI videos. #AI #priest #ICE #church #video ♬ original sound - PolitiFact

Some people in the comments commended the unidentified bishop for his bravery to stand against law enforcement. Other commenters wrongly identified him as Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado, whom ICE prohibited from giving detained Catholics holy communion back in November.

Churches have warned parishioners of ICE presence and have spoken against it in their local communities. But this video isn’t real. 

The same user posted other videos of priests with similar scripts at different churches on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. According to the user’s social media profiles, he sells multiple courses on how to earn money with AI videos made with AI video generators such as Sora 2 and Veo. 

The videos look convincing, but there are some generative AI giveaways:

• A bag held by one of the parishioners is floating in the air.

• Some of the mouths and facial features of the parishioners look distorted.

We didn’t find credible news articles pertaining to the incident, specifically in local news outlets from cities such as Chicago, New Orleans and North Carolina, where the federal government has conducted recent ICE operations.

PolitiFact ran the Instagram video through Hive Moderation, which helps determine whether videos were generated with artificial intelligence. These programs are imperfect, but Hive Moderation concluded that the video is "99.9% likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content."