Amid efforts to ramp up deportations during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, Facebook posts shared in July 2025 claimed U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had deported a high-ranking officer within the Marine Corps: Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz.
The posts linked to an article published by duffelblog.com with a headline that read "ICE deports Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps."
Some commenters appeared to take the rumor as fact, and Snopes readers also messaged us to ask if it was true.
However, there's no evidence that ICE deported Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, the military branch's highest-ranking enlistee. Instead, the rumor originated as satire.
Duffel Blog, the website that shared the article referenced in the Facebook posts, describes itself as "the first and only satire news outlet devoted to the U.S. military and national security community." The satirical outlet also shared the made-up story about Ruiz's deportation on its own Facebook, X and Instagram accounts.
Duffel Blog's social media bios don't explicitly state that the outlet publishes satirical content, which could cause confusion for people who don't explore the website's "About" page. Instead, the bios describe it as "America's Most Trusted Military News."
Searches for "Marine Corps sergeant major deported" on Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo did not find any credible media outlets reporting on such an incident. If a senior Marine Corps officer like Ruiz had really been deported, reputable news outlets would have reported on that development.
It's also worth noting that the photo used in the Duffel Blog article was likely generated using artificial intelligence, AI detection platforms Hive and Sightengine found, though these platforms are not always accurate.
(Hive AI Detector)
Snopes has fact-checked multiple satirical claims from Duffel Blog in the past. For example, we debunked a rumor that the Coast Guard started reselling seized cocaine to raise funds during a government shutdown.
For further reading, we investigated a July 2025 claim that ICE detained a disabled veteran who had U.S. citizenship during an immigration raid at a California farm.