A Facebook video claiming to show Venezuelan migrants deported from Colombia in trucks under President De La Espriella's orders is false.

Cotejo.info confirmed the video has been online for eight years, dated July 25, 2018, predating De La Espriella's August 2026 deportation order.

A separate TikTok video with 5.8 million views falsely claims a Bogotá police operation targeted Venezuelan migrants; it is old footage from Bogotá's Security Secretariat.

De La Espriella did order Migración Colombia and Barranquilla police on August 25 to identify and deport irregular migrants committing crimes.

This is a fact-checking signal about recycled audiovisual material being attached to a current political figure. The central item is a Facebook video that, according to Cotejo.info, has been online for eight years and is dated July 25, 2018 — well before the August 2026 deportation order attributed to President Abelardo De La Espriella. The claim that the footage shows Venezuelan migrants deported from Colombia in trucks under his orders is therefore presented as false on chronological grounds: the recording predates the event it is said to depict. A second, separate item — a TikTok video with 5.8 million views claiming a Bogotá police operation targeted Venezuelan migrants — is likewise described as old footage from Bogotá's Security Secretariat. Read together, the pattern is not a single disputed clip but a recurring technique: old or unrelated security footage recaptioned to fit a present-day migration controversy.

The epistemic status of these items differs from the status of the underlying events. The false-attribution findings rest on Cotejo.info's dating and provenance work, as relayed by El Diario Venezuela, whose source profile is unclassified; that means the reader should treat the outlet as a transmission channel for the fact-check rather than as an independent verifier. The deportation order itself is referenced only as a date anchor, not as a documented operation. Our own corpus has no matching record for any of the three claims, and because the per-claim corroboration probe cannot yet tell whether two sources report the same claim (0 of 24,929 claim keys cross sources, measured 2026-09-13), we cannot yet check these items against other sources. That is a limit of our check, not a finding about the world.

The assessment would change on two observable triggers. First, if Migración Colombia publishes an official report confirming mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants in trucks from Colombia between August 25 and September 30, 2026, the chronological objection to the Facebook video would lose force as a rebuttal of the operation, even if the specific clip remains misdated. Second, if the Facebook video identified as false is removed or flagged by Facebook's fact-checking partners within 30 days, that would indicate platform-level acceptance of the fact-check. Absent either, the signal remains a documented case of recycled footage in a migration-information environment, with the entities named — Migración Colombia, Policía de Barranquilla, Secretaría de Seguridad de Bogotá, El Tiempo, and Venezuelans in Barranquilla — marking the institutional and geographic nodes around which such claims circulate.

The claims, made testable

• asserted — check unavailable A Facebook video claiming to show Venezuelan migrants deported from Colombia in trucks under President De La Espriella's orders is false. (evidence: not measured)
• asserted — check unavailable Cotejo.info confirmed the video has been online for eight years, dated July 25, 2018, predating De La Espriella's August 2026 deportation order. (evidence: not measured)
• asserted — check unavailable A separate TikTok video with 5.8 million views falsely claims a Bogotá police operation targeted Venezuelan migrants; it is old footage from Bogotá's Security Secretariat. (evidence: not measured)

Pattern: 336 related Venezuela signals in the last 30 days on misinformation, migration, Colombia-Venezuela relations, fact-checking.

Tracked scenarios this moves

• Venezuela: Regional Migration Spillover — indicator: Migrant flow Colombia border

What would change the assessment

• If Migración Colombia publishes an official report confirming mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants in trucks from Colombia between August 25 and September 30, 2026. (within 30 days — Migración Colombia official press releases)
• If the Facebook video identified as false is removed or flagged by Facebook's fact-checking partners within 30 days. (within 30 days — Facebook transparency reports / Meta content moderation)

Grounded analysis — deterministic intelligence + AI synthesis anchored to real signals (deterministic + anchored deepseek-chat). No fact is asserted that the sources do not support.

What the sources establish

The source makes the assertions summarized above; VeraVadis has not yet found independent corroboration in its corpus.

Actors named in sources

Abelardo De La Espriella · Cotejo.info · Migración Colombia · Policía de Barranquilla · Venezolanos en Barranquilla · El Tiempo · Secretaría de Seguridad de Bogotá

Click an actor to see other briefs that name it.

What's still unverified

• El Diario afirma que es falso el video que muestra a migrantes venezolanos deportados en camiones desde Colombia por órdenes del presidente Abelardo De La Espriella
• Cotejo.info constató que el audiovisual lleva ocho años en línea y no guarda relación con la orden de deportación de migrantes en situación irregular dada en agosto de 2026 — Cotejo.info
• El medio determinó que la publicación está fechada del 25 de julio de 2018 — El medio
• Abelardo De La Espriella ordenó a Migración Colombia y a la Policía de Barranquilla poner en marcha operativos para identificar a migrantes en situación irregular y a extranjeros que estén cometiendo delitos quienes serán deportados
• Abelardo De La Espriella expresó en un consejo de seguridad "No voy a aceptar a inmigrantes ilegales de donde sea que vengan que estén cometiendo delitos en Colombia. Se van y los deportamos" — Abelardo De La Espriella