Past hoax · Filed Oct 16, 2026
Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
Mounted Border Patrol agents whipped Haitian migrants.
The claim
Mounted Border Patrol agents whipped Haitian migrants.
What it was
The reins were called whips. The photographer and the investigation said the agents were not whipping people.
Timeline
Sep 19, 2021
Photographs from Del Rio show mounted Border Patrol agents and Haitian migrants. The reins are called whips.
That week
The photographer says he did not see whipping. Coverage still describes men whipping migrants.
Jul 8, 2022
A federal review finds no whipping. Other misconduct findings are then cited as if they confirmed the whip.
The reins
The agents were holding split reins, the ordinary tack on a horse. A whip was not in the kit. The photo stays labeled a whipping.
What aired
In September 2021 photographs from the migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas, showed mounted Border Patrol agents and Haitian migrants at the river. The reins in the agents’ hands were called whips. Members of Congress and CNN described men on horseback whipping Black migrants. The stills were the evidence.
The record
The photographer, Paul Ratje, said he had not seen whipping. The agents were twirling reins, which is how you turn a horse. A later federal review did not find that migrants had been whipped. It did find harsh language and some use of force the agency did not want. Those findings were then cited as if they had confirmed the whip.
Left out
Left out was the difference between a rein and a whip, which the man who took the picture was willing to explain. Also left out was what a horse line is for at a river crossing. A mounted agent is a ugly picture next to a family in the water. Ugly became a weapon that was not in his hand.
Why it stuck
It stuck because the still looks like a nineteenth-century etching, and the country has a real history that the etching resembles. Resemblance was treated as identity. Once the word “whip” was attached, a report that said “not a whip” sounded like a technicality. The etching remained.