Image of Biden awarding medal to middle finger-flipping migrant is fabricated | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Image shows Biden awarding medal to man making obscene gesture

A March 9 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) appears to show President Joe Biden placing the Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of a man making an obscene gesture.

“Illegals beat up American police officers in Times Square, got out of jail for free and, instead of being deported, were given free tickets to California … Why?” reads the text in the post, which is a screenshot of a March 8 post on X, formerly Twitter, from Elon Musk.

Comments from some social media users indicate they believe the image is authentic.

“Are you freaking serious rewarding a 21 illegal immigrant who beat up a cop! (sic)” wrote one commenter.

“And he was given a medal?” wrote another.

The Instagram post was liked more than 1,000 times in nine days. The original X post was shared thousands of times.

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Our rating: Altered

The image was digitally edited to add the man making the obscene gesture. It was first posted by an account that creates satirical memes. The man shown in the image was also exonerated in the police attack, with prosecutors calling it a case of mistaken identity.

Image originated from account that posts memes

A fight between migrants and New York City police officers broke out Jan. 27 outside a Times Square homeless shelter. A man initially accused of kicking an officer during the brawl became a public face of the ongoing immigration debate when he was photographed giving the middle finger while leaving a Manhattan court.

But the image shown in the posts is a fabrication. The man – 22-year-old Venezuelan migrant Jhoan Boada – was digitally edited into a photo taken of Biden during a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony.

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The screenshotted X post in the Instagram post is cropped to remove Musk's name and the timestamp. The edited image shown in it bears a watermark of the account @GrandOldMemes, which describes itself in its Instagram bio as “your daily conservative meme plug” and posted the meme in question Feb. 1.

The image of Boada that is used in the meme was taken Jan. 31 by New York Post photographer Steven Hirsch as Boada left his initial arraignment. He was charged with assault and accused of kicking an officer during the fight but was released without bail.

The charge against Boada was dropped March 1 when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg exonerated him. Prosecutors concluded Boada – who had maintained his innocence throughout the process – was misidentified and played no role in the attack. Musk shared the X post with the altered Boada image a week after Boada was exonerated.

The post is also inaccurate in its claim that the migrants who assaulted the officers "got out of jail for free" and "were given tickets to California." Five men were charged in the case, all of whom were in law enforcement custody as of March 12, according to FOX 5 NY. Another two are sought in connection to the incident.

The Instagram post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," in which images originally presented as satire are captured and reposted in a way that makes them appear to be authentic. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened with this image.

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden didn't give award to middle finger-flipping migrant | Fact check