Share first, verify later! Jose Antonio Vargas gets journalism backwards with viral photo of 'kids in cages'

Greg P. | 11:11 AM on June 12, 2018

At 12:45 a.m. today, journalist and illegal immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas shared this photo and tweeted, “This is what happens when a government believes people are ‘illegal.’ Kids in cages.”

His tweet has been liked and shared thousands of times:

This is what happens when a government believes people are “illegal.”

Kids in cages. pic.twitter.com/OAnvr9cl3P

— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) June 12, 2018

Roughly 9 hours later, Vargas then decided to question if the photo was authentic or not. This tweet has been retweeted only a dozen times:

Still trying to find a source for this photo. Saw it on a FB friend’s timeline but looking for confirmation. Has anyone seen it elsewhere?

— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) June 12, 2018

It’s journalism in reverse!

As for the child in a cage, we haven’t seen immigrants treated this way — if it is, indeed, an immigrant held in U.S. custody since … Barack Obama was president:

KEEP DIGGING: Jon Favreau responds to his now infamous deleted tweet of the Obama kennels https://t.co/SPyKejDkQT

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) May 29, 2018

Now, we have no idea if it’s a current image or not and it’s not showing up in Google’s reverse image database. But what it is, at worst, is an image showing that the Trump administration and the Obama administration are remarkably similar in the treatment of minors. We’ll see what the story is if/when someone finds the source of the image.