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White House posts an altered photo of Minnesota protester's arrest to make it look like she was crying

By
Maddie Kornfeld
Verification Producer, CBS News Confirmed
Maddie Kornfeld is a verification producer for CBS News Confirmed, focused on tracking misinformation and verifying user-generated content.
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Maddie Kornfeld,
Laura Doan
Laura Doan
Fact Checker, CBS News Confirmed
Laura Doan is a fact checker for CBS News Confirmed. She covers misinformation, AI and social media.
Read Full Bio
Laura Doan

/ CBS News

The White House posted a on social media that was digitally altered to make it look like a protester was sobbing as she was arrested in connection with a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Minnesota church.

A of Nekima Levy Armstrong's arrest — showing Armstrong with a neutral expression — was first posted on X by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Thursday morning. The image the White House posted appears the same except Armstrong's altered facial expression shows her distressed, with tears running down her face. 

The White House posted the image of Armstrong seemingly crying with a caption calling her "a far-left agitator," roughly 30 minutes after Noem posted the initial image. The altered version was also reposted on X by Vice President JD Vance. 

armstrong-pics.jpg
The image on the left, shared by the White House on X, was digitally altered to make it look like Nekima Levy Armstrong was crying during her arrest. The image on the right, posted roughly 30 minutes earlier by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, showed Armstrong with a neutral expression. CBS News

The White House's post drew a flood of comments from X users, with many saying the image appeared to have been manipulated. 

In response to CBS News' request for comment on whether the photo was altered, the White House press office sent a link to an X post by White House spokesman Kaelan Dorr referring to the post as a "meme."

"Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter," Dorr on X.

Jordan Kushner, an attorney for Armstrong, called the image "extremely offensive." 

"It's a huge insult to try to make her out to be behaving in a way she didn't behave," he told CBS News. "It's a huge injustice to her outside of the absurd changes they leveled in the first place. This whole prosecution is politically motivated. By posting a fictitious picture they are prejudicing the potential jury pool."  

Digital forensics expert Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California Berkeley and co-founder and chief science officer at GetReal Security, told CBS News that while it's not clear how the image was altered, it was likely edited with AI.

"This is not the first time that the White House has shared AI-manipulated or AI-generated content. This trend is troubling on several levels. Not only are they sharing deceptive content, they are making it increasingly more difficult for the public to trust anything they share with us," Farid said.

The arrest of Armstrong and several fellow protesters came amid a wave of protests across the Twin Cities following the fatal shooting of  Renee Good by an ICE officer earlier this month.

Armstrong is a civil rights attorney and former president of the Minneapolis NAACP who helped lead a demonstration during a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, where a local ICE officer apparently serves as a pastor. Noem said Armstrong is being charged under , a statute that prohibits the intimidation of someone exercising a Constitutional right. 

She is expected to be released after a judge rejected a request for a detention hearing. 

Two others, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly, were also arrested Thursday in connection to the Cities Church demonstration, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. But a magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint charging independent journalist Don Lemon in connection with that protest, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told CBS News. Lemon, a former CNN anchor, was there "engaging in constitutionally protected activity as a journalist," his attorney said in a statement.

President Trump has a history of sharing AI-generated images on social media. On Tuesday, he posted an AI-generated image on , depicting him holding an American flag in Greenland, standing next to Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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