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VERIFY: Are these photos of Mexican police officers attacked by the migrant caravan real?

One photo is from an article about a 2016 teachers union rally in Salina Cruz that's 250 miles away from where the caravan is now.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES.

QUESTION:

Are these photos of Mexican police officers attacked by the migrant caravan?

ANSWER:

No, they are photos taken from 2016 and 2011.

SOURCES:

Oaxaca Entrelineas article- February 17, 2011

PSN Primer Sistema de Noticias article- June 18, 2016

El Universal article- December 15, 2014

PROCESS:

With a caravan of more than 7,200 Hondurans and Guatemalans, CBS reports, making headway towards the U.S. southwest border, there are a lot of people tweeting out pictures. Not all of them are true or accurate.

As our Verify team has found in the past, photos can be visceral and often miscaptioned and misconstrued.

Some people are tweeting photos, allegedly of what happened after Mexican police and the caravan clashed Friday, while crossing the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Some of them are gory, showing battered and bloodied police officers.

To find out if they were real, our researchers did a reverse image search.

One photo is from an article about a 2016 teachers union rally in Salina Cruz that's 250 miles away from where the caravan is now.

Another photo our researchers traced back to 2011, which is also from a demonstration between the national teachers union and the state government. That happened in Zocalo, central Mexico, a good 700 miles away from where police and and the caravan met.

Another photo shows an officer clutching his leg on the ground: It's from a 2014 clash in Mexico, appearing in an El Universal article on December 15, 2014.

So we can Verify, false, these are not photos of officers beat up in a clash the migrant caravan.

While these photos are miscaptioned, it doesn't mean there wasn't some violence along the Guatemala-Mexico border; it just wasn't quite as graphic and bloody.

These Verified photos from Getty Images show the caravan prying open a gate into Mexico, then getting hit with tear gas.

On October 19, 2018 in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala, the caravan of thousands of immigrants, most from Honduras, pushed open the gate on the Guatemalan side and crossed the bridge to Mexico but were then pushed back by Mexican riot police.
A child takes cover as Mexican riot police clash with the migrant caravan on the border of Mexico and Guatemala on October 19, 2018 in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala. The clash occurred when the caravan of thousands tried to enter Mexico.
A Mexican riot policeman shields an immigrant mother and child from flying rocks during a clash between police and the migrant caravan on the border between Mexico and Guatemala on October 19, 2018 in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala.

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