Fact Check: US police arrest illegal workers at shopping mall? No, video is from Germany

Hyderabad: US President Donald Trump-led government has intensified deportation efforts against illegal migrants in the USA. A plane carrying 112 Indian immigrants deemed illegal by the USA landed in Amritsar on February 16. This is the third batch of immigrants to arrive in the country after the first round of deportations which took place on February 5.

In this context, a video of a group of people being pulled aside by the police is going viral on social media. The video is circulating with the claim that it shows the situation of people working illegally in American shopping malls.

The video was posted to X with the caption, “The situation at American shopping malls for those working without a work permit. The video shows the arrest of those working illegally.” (Translated from Telugu) (Archive)

Posts making similar claims can be seen here, here and here. (Archive 1, Archive 2 and Archive 3)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video shows police action in Germany, not the USA

In the viral video, the police officers are seen wearing vests that say ‘Polizei’ meaning ‘Police’ in German. The ‘Polizei’ vests can be seen being worn by most of the officers in the video. A screenshot from the viral video can be seen here.

In the background of the viral video, we found the store named ‘Einstein Koffee’. Using keyword searches, we found that most of the outlets of this company are located in Germany. The information so far indicated that the video may not be from the USA.

Next, in a reverse image search of the video's keyframes, we found several social media posts that uploaded the same video.

An X user shared the video on December 21, 2024, with the caption, “German police used excessive violence against peaceful pro-Palestine protestors at the Central Train Station in Berlin.” The video has the inscription, ‘Berlin today 20.12.2024’ on it. (Archive)

Another X post shared the same video on December 22, 2024, with the caption, “German police brutally harassed women for wearing a Palestinian chaffiyeh scarf in a mall in Berlin. The German police officers would grab and pull any person they saw who had a symbol of Palestine. These are the same people that talk about abuse elsewhere…” (Archive)

An Iranian news agency, ABNA24, uploaded the same video to its website on December 21, 2024, with the title, ‘Video: German police assault pro-Palestine protesters gathered in Berlin central train station.’

Reporting about the incident from the video, German news outlet Bild stated, “On Friday evening around 6:45 pm, around 30 anti-Israel demonstrators gathered at Berlin Central Station on Europlatz. Some of the demonstrators had to be led away by police.”

The same coffee shop can be seen in the videos in these reports too. Similarities between the Einstein Koffee store from Berlin Central Railway Station and the viral video screenshot can be found below.

From these reports, we can confirm that the viral video was shot at the Central Railway Station in Berlin on December 20, 2024.

Several claims regarding the deportation of illegal Indian immigrants by the USA were debunked by NewsMeter in the past. You can find them here and here.

The video does not show police arresting people working illegally without permits in America. The video is from a protest at the Berlin Central Railway Station on December 20, 2024.

Therefore, the viral claim is false.The claim is false. The video shows a protest in Berlin Central Railway Station, Germany, on December 20, 2024.