On May 4, 2025, a YouTube user with more than 1.29 million subscribers, Cash Jordan, published a video titled "Migrants Ambush US Marines… Get Deported Instantly." The clip's thumbnail image purportedly depicted migrants preparing to ambush a group of armed, uniformed Marines with a tank positioned behind them.
The video had around 300,000 views and included advertising breaks to earn the creator revenue via YouTube's monetization feature. Users on Facebook, Threads, Truth Social and X also shared the clip.
(Cash Jordan/YouTube)
However, the video featured a misleading title and a fake, artificial intelligence-generated thumbnail image, according to scans using the AI-detection tools Sightengine and WasItAI. No part of the video showed migrants ambushing Marines, nor did the clip mention Marines at all. Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google displayed no results from news media outlets reporting about any such incident. The YouTuber previously published other videos making similar claims about migrants allegedly attacking Marines, also with inauthentic thumbnail images.
Snopes requested an interview with Jordan via his Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts but did not yet receive a response.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense, citing multiple sources across the Army's Joint Task Force-Southern Border headquarters element, told us via email: "Joint Task Force Southern Border has no knowledge of any incident involving migrants ambushing U.S. Marines at the U.S.-Mexico border. No such incident, violent or otherwise, has been reported or documented by JTF-Southern Border and its subordinate units." The spokesperson added: "We appreciate Snopes' commitment to fact-checking and combating misinformation. The spread of unverified rumors can undermine the safety and morale of our service members and the communities we serve."
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson, Ohene Gyapong, similarly told us by email: "We are not aware of any U.S. service members being killed in an engagement at the U.S.-Mexico border nor any other border." They made note of an unrelated matter involving two Marines' deaths and a third Marine in critical condition, following a vehicle crash near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on April 15. The Marine Corps did not yet respond to a request for comment.
Breaking down Cash Jordan's video
Jordan's 15-minute video featured moments from various news media outlets' reports about the southern U.S. border. The video also included a segment about body-camera footage from a February shooting in Brownsville, Texas — an altercation mentioned in the clip's text description — as well as commentary from Jordan himself.
The video begins with a mix of clips from authentic news reports, including "How law enforcement targets migrants on 'smuggler's highway'" (NewsNation, March 3), "Stunned cops allegedly find 180K rounds of ammo packed in minivan driven by two Mexican nationals" (New York Post, April 21) and "27 accused Tren de Aragua members charged in NYC: Prosecutors" (WPIX-TV, April 22).
In the middle portion of the video, Jordan examines body-camera footage from a U.S. Border Patrol shooting in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2025. Border Patrol is a division of the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection agency. Websites for CBP, the Air Force and the Marines hosted the footage, though the incident involved only Border Patrol agents, per the summary information provided in the video's narration. The altercation did not involve migrants ambushing U.S. officials:
On Feb. 12, 2025, Border Patrol Agents (BPAs) assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol Fort Brown Station flex team in Brownsville, Texas were conducting ground surveillance to deter smuggling activities at a location approximately 17.5 miles east of the Veterans Bridge port of entry and 0.04 miles north of the Rio Grande River.
The Fort Brown flex team received a call from SpaceX security regarding unusual activity occurring near the Rio Grande River between the United States and Mexico.
At approximately 6:40 p.m., Central Standard Time, Fort Brown BPAs located a group of individuals occupying a GMC Denali pickup truck near a boat ramp off Highway 4 in Brownsville, Texas. BPAs reported that they believed the subjects were attempting to smuggle firearms into Mexico using a boat.
During the encounter, a BPA discharged his CBP-issued M4 rifle at one of the subjects who was armed with an Anderson AM-15 firearm. The subject, a citizen of Mexico, was struck in the abdomen.
The rest of the summary said Border Patrol agents secured the scene, apprehended additional suspects, recovered the firearm and rendered aid to the injured subject until emergency medical services arrived. The summary ended, "There were no reported injuries to BPAs involved in this incident."
In the last several minutes of Jordan's video, he examines footage from an Al Jazeera report from 2019, when President Donald Trump was serving his first term in the White House. The report displayed the title, "Exclusive: Mexican cartel reveals ease of smuggling guns from US." Jordan, noting the video's 2019 upload year, says of the footage, "And the real problem here is that if America had been controlling its border for the last few years, we wouldn't have people inside our country who are trying to stock up on things they shouldn't own to begin with."
For further reading, a previous fact check confirmed it was true that, as of January 2024, more than 7.2 million migrants had illegally crossed into the U.S. over the southern border during President Joe Biden's administration — a number higher than the individual populations of 36 states.