Does this video show a UCLA Chinese graduate being deported for supporting Palestine? Fact Check
Claim: Footage allegedly shows how the US deported Liu Lijuan, a Chinese graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles for supporting Palestine.
Conclusion: The claim is false. The footage is not recent and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has denied deporting the woman. No credible evidence supports the existence of a Chinese student named Liu Lijun who was deported by U.S. authorities for pro-Palestinian activism.
Rating: False 
Several social media users have shared a clip, claiming that it shows how the United States deported a Chinese student, Liu Lijuan, for supporting Palestine. Verified X user ‘Rusia_HD’ shared such a post with the caption : “The U.S. deported Chinese student Liu Lijun for supporting Palestine..” Attached to the post is a 17 second video which allegedly shows US forces arresting a girl. View the post below –
The U.S. deported Chinese student Liu Lijun for supporting Palestine.. pic.twitter.com/zWHXQbUVUG
— Russia X 🇷🇺 (@Rusia_HD) August 16, 2026
Another user has claimed that the Chinese girl Liu Lijuan is a graduate student studying at the University of California, Los Angeles who had her visa revoked. View this post below –
加州大学洛杉矶分校的中国研究生刘丽娟因参与支持哈马斯恐怖组织的抗议活动，美国政府去年2月撤销了她的学生签证，她在加州沙漠里的阿德兰德移民拘留所内经过了漫长的6个月的悔过和申诉，想尽了一切办法试图留在美国，本周二她被递解。年轻人缺乏社会阅历，缺乏政治经验，很容易被一些说着华丽言词的人… pic.twitter.com/Gnt20TE4zR
— Xiang Yang 向阳 (@TheXiangYang) August 13, 2026
FACT CHECK
DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and found it to be false. The video shows older footage, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has rejected claims that the woman was deported. There is also no credible evidence that a Chinese student named Liu Lijun was deported by U.S. authorities for participating in pro-Palestinian activism.
We first conducted a reverse image search on various keyframes of the video to learn about the origin. The search took us to a Youtube video uploaded by Fox News on 3 May, 2024, titled : “‘The Five’: Cops raid UCLA’s anti-Israel encampment”. The visuals at the 0:50 timestamp match the footage shown in the claim, proving that this is not a recent incident but old footage.
From the video description we learnt that the police were “clearing UCLA’s pro-Palestinian encampment and President Biden’s speech on anti-Israel protests on college campuses.” The officers are shown detaining protesters, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carrying out a removal. Moreover, DigitEYE India found no evidence confirming that the girl in the video is Liu Lijuan or establishing whether she was a student or an outsider protesting on campus.
Following this, we conducted a web search to learn whether a Chinese graduate named Liu Lijuan really studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) or not. According to a X post by Drop Site News, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has explicitly denied the claim. They said : “We don’t have information to support the accuracy of the claims on-line.”
JUST IN: ICE Denies Viral Claim About UCLA Protester’s Detention
Drop Site News reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding viral claims that a UCLA graduate student, incorrectly identified as Liu Lijun on social media, had been arrested and was… pic.twitter.com/wC8c6JTaex
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 3, 2025
Another report by USC Annenberg Media also found no evidence that a UCLA student named Liu Lijuan had her visa revoked. The report quoted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which denied the claim, stating, “We have nothing to support these claims as being true.” It further noted that sources familiar with the protests confirmed that “the person in the video has a different name.” View a section from the report below –
Lastly, we found an anonymous first-person account published by Poppy Press, a student-run community publication at UCLA, in May 2025. The author, whose identity remains undisclosed, claimed to be the woman seen in the viral footage and addressed the false claims about her identity. She wrote that “Anti-CCP propagandists even began to fabricate details of my supposed identity… [the] xenophobic fake story was so outrageously wrong that I had to laugh!”
She further stated that she was “an undergraduate student born and raised in the United States” who “can barely speak Chinese.” The author also said that the name “Liu Lijun” was so far removed from her actual identity that it “has become an inside joke among my friends.”
Thus, the claim is false.
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