5-year-old Child Handcuffed at Dulles Airport Over Immigration Ban-Mostly Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Viral social media posts depicting a small child handcuffed have fueled rumors that a small child was handcuffed at Dulles Airport because of President Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending immigration from seven countries.
The Truth:
A five-year-old child was detained at Dulles Airport for hours without being able to speak to his parents — but a viral photo of a small child handcuffed is unrelated and doesn’t actually show the child detained at Dulles Airport.
President Trump’s controversial executive order temporarily suspending immigration from seven countries led to a number of incoming refugees and immigrants being detained at airports around the country toward the end of January 2017. One of those was a five-year-old child detained at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
The boy had been traveling with his mother from Iran and another family member when he was detained for several hours before takeoff without access to his mother, WJLA in Washington, D.C., reports. The boy’s teary reunion with his mother several hours later was quickly circulated to demonstrate the impact Trump’s executive action had had on international travelers:
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HUQYwPnLA[/embedyt]
In the aftermath of small child being detained at Dulles Airport posts began circulating on social media depicting a young child handcuffed in a chair that led viewers to believe (either intentionally or not) that photo actually showed the child at Dulles:
But the photo of the handcuffed child was actually taken in 2015 and shows an 8-year-old boy who was handcuffed by a school resources officer in New Jersey. The situation caused a public backlash at the time, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit on the boys behalf and released a video of the small child crying and struggling in a small plastic chair:
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQHCHjqVaQ[/embedyt]
So, while it’s true that a small child was held at Dulles Airport for several hours without his mother present, this 2015 video was unrelated to that situation.