Friday, Jan. 31, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Francisco Silva fills his Facebook feed with sponsored shoutouts to local Latino-owned businesses in Las Vegas and posts about the state’s natural landmarks.
But lately, thousands have flocked to his page as he dispels rumors of immigration enforcement across the city.
In one livestream, the Spanish-speaking Silva, who was born in Mexico, showed that there was no checkpoint at the intersection of Las Vegas and Lamb boulevards despite an Instagram story saying otherwise.
In another, he clarified that trucks near UNLV’s campus were with Clark County Code Enforcement, not U.S. Border Patrol.
Upwards of 70 people messaged Silva during President Donald Trump’s first week in office to share rumors they heard, he said.
Silva was sent 23 more messages Wednesday, more in one day than he had ever received previously. They’re all in new locations, Silva wrote in a text message to the Sun.
“There was a time when I was also undocumented and I also felt very afraid,” said Silva, who is now a legal resident, in Spanish. “I know how they’re feeling because I felt that way too at that point.”
“People write to me asking, ‘Is this true? Can you go check if this is true?” he said.
Local immigrant activists are sounding the alarm about rampant misinformation regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and immigration checkpoints. Real raids across the country have only worsened the problem.
“ICE has not set up checkpoints in Nevada. It’s not something that’s happened,” said Athar Haseebullah, the executive director of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union. “To my knowledge, everything that’s been effectuated … has not been verified.”
More than 180,000 undocumented immigrants live in Nevada, making up around 9% of the state’s workforce, according to the American Immigration Council.
Since Trump took office, ICE has reupped its efforts in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta, though the agency’s published arrest numbers haven’t yet extremely deviated from where they were under President Joe Biden.
But the new administration is publicizing its efforts in every way possible.
Kristi Noem, the newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security secretary, posted a video of herself wearing ICE gear Tuesday in New York City helping get “the dirtbags off the streets.”
Noem watched over a raid that ended in the arrest of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua’s “ringleader,” the secretary wrote on X. Gothamist reported that “there’s no indication yet if the raids were out of the ordinary.”
And while Trump has emphasized he’s going after violent criminals, only half of ICE arrests on Sunday were considered “criminal arrests,” according to data obtained by NBC News.
Haseebullah said the Trump administration didn’t have the resources to deport the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Though the fear created by unverified reports — on top of legitimate raids — could make life more difficult as people skip out on work, school and errands.
“It creates a panic cycle. I think that panic cycle is a direct desire of this particular administration,” he said. “Sharing misinformation and disinformation at this time isn’t merely reckless, it is excessively harmful.”
Silva, 44, said mothers had messaged him saying they were not sending their children to school because they were worried “they’ll be arrested and there will be no one to pick up their children.”
“A lot of our community is staying indoors, and that can definitely impact our pockets,” said Erika Marquez, an organizer with immigrant rights group Make the Road Nevada. She said some people from California weren’t coming to Vegas for leisure because of fears of an immigration checkpoint between the two states.
A multiday raid in Bakersfield, Calif. — a four-hour drive from Vegas — this month before Trump took office kicked off the deluge of rumors sent to Silva.
Since then, an artificially generated image of a Border Patrol agent filling up a gas tank in East Las Vegas spread across local Latino Facebook groups. And last week, a photo of a police-themed ice cream truck in Las Vegas went viral, with the original post saying the vehicle belonged to ICE.
Misinformation is “one of the biggest issues” facing local immigrants, Marquez said. She said people should send time-stamped photos of unverified reports to Make the Road Nevada so the organization can confirm their legitimacy.
Marquez said the organization had gotten a “large influx of calls,” but that it can only keep up so much.
“If we definitely see that it’s ICE, we can go ahead and make sure everyone is aware of it and, more than anything, make sure that the person who is getting detained is not getting abused either,” she said.
Haseebullah said people needed to ask those spreading information about ICE raids, sometimes with good intentions, to verify their claims. The ACLU director said that in a social media ecosystem where engagement is placed above everything else, some people are careless if not intentionally spreading lies.
“It’s great for people that want to do this to go out and verify, but there’s momentum behind this now,” Haseebullah said. “This isn’t something that’s going to stop in the first week of this administration.”
In one of his latest livestreams, Silva went to an intersection just south of Nellis Air Force Base.
He let people know that, despite what they’ve heard online, ICE wasn’t there. “La gente le gusta estar provocando miedo solamente!” one of the top comments reads, meaning “People only like to spread fear!”
“I believe that God granted me my residency documents to serve my community, and as long as I’m here in Las Vegas … and I can help them, I’ll do it,” Silva said. “I’ll be there to help my people.”
Find Silva on Facebook.
[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard
