In the first week of June 2026, a claim spread online that "illegal immigrants stole and butchered" two family horses for meat "over the weekend," which presumably meant in late May 2026.
The rumor circulated on X and Facebook (archived) alongside footage that appeared to show a news broadcast about the supposed events.
The footage originated with legitimate news coverage from 2023 — not 2026 — about two domestic horses found slaughtered in Miami-Dade County. Whether or not the horses were butchered for their meat appears to be speculation by their owners, not definitive fact, although it's true that Florida was dealing with horse butcherings due to an illicit horse-meat market at the time.
News coverage of the incident from 2023 did not indicate that police caught any suspects, nor did it indicate they suspected the culprits were people without legal immigration status.
Given that this claim misrepresents old news coverage, treats undetermined information as fact and casts blame without evidence, we have rated it mostly false.
According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, crime related to Florida's horse-meat black market has declined drastically in its jurisdiction since 2023, with no cases reported in 2025. Despite being taboo in the United States, horse meat is considered a delicacy around the world, including in cultures in Europe, South America and Asia.
Snopes reached out to the sheriff's office for an update on the 2023 case and await a response.
News report from 2023
As of this writing, the full news report and broadcast clip from 2023 is still available (archived) on the website of WSVN, an ABC affiliate in South Florida.
The report is titled "'This is heartless': 2 horses stolen from SW Miami-Dade barn found slaughtered blocks away." Neither the news story nor the video segment mentions any descriptions of the thieves or the thieves' immigration statuses.
The horses' owner, David Bradley, says in the clip at 1:06 that the horses, whom he considers his "children," were "abducted and killed for meat." However, the detective interviewed from Miami-Dade Police Department, Alvaro Zabaleta, did not repeat Bradley's claim, at least in the clip. Here's his full statement at 1:11:
Both horses were slaughtered sometime over the weekend. We need to come together, help out the detectives in this investigation. Let's give some closure to the family, and of course, put behind bars these individuals that would do such a heinous crime.
A WFOR news report (archived) on the same incident quoted Bradley stating that he believes the horses were killed for their meat due to a "cultural thing:"
"In Cuba, people believe that eating horse meat will cure things like AIDS and cancer," said Bradley. "That's like going into someone's yard, and eating their dog because they think it makes them grow wings, it's ridiculous."
(It is worth noting that while Western news outlets quote animal activists stating that some cultures believe horse meat has medicinal properties, actual academic research on it is scarce to nonexistent, per a Snopes review.)
A Google search for any updated information on this particular case as of spring 2026 returned no relevant results.
Florida's illegal horse meat trade
An April 2026 article from the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office said that since 2023, the office's agricultural patrol section has cut in half the category of crime that involves both "the theft of avocados and other produce, and the grisly, illicit slaughter of horses for meat."
Per the article, Sgt. Pedro Guerra, who oversees the unit, said there were "an average of five or six horse slaughters a year" when he started in 2023.
"Through our investigations, we identified the main players — the criminal organizations — and we brought those main antagonists to justice. In 2025, there wasn't a single case," Guerra said.
The sheriff office's article mentions that the section found some individuals stealing avocados "were undocumented."
"Through collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, those undocumented individuals provided valuable information that helped Detective Guerra in his investigations of not only produce, but also with the horse thefts and other criminal activities," the report said.
The report did not specify whether the aforementioned individuals without legal immigration status had anything to do with the horse thefts — merely that they had information that helped investigate those thefts.