Kristi Noem’s Salvadoran Prison Video is Real, not a Green-Screen Fake
What happened: Liberal social media users are falsely claiming that a March 2025 video of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem inside a Latin American prison was staged with a green screen.
Context: Kicking off a tour of three Latin American countries on March 26, Noem visited the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security prison in El Salvador. She used the setting to tout the Trump administration’s strong anti-illegal immigration stance.
The prison holds hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who were deported from the U.S. in early March under unproven allegations that all were affiliated with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang accused of committing violent crimes throughout the U.S.
A closer look: Noem posted a video on X of herself standing in front of a cell containing dozens of inmates. “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said in the video.
You can watch the video here:
Liberal accounts immediately claimed that Noem was not really at the prison and had faked her appearance by superimposing a prerecorded, looped footage of incarcerated men on a green screen behind her.
Liberal X user @cturnbull1968 stated: “There is something squirrely about this video. She’s been superimposed into a video of the Salvadorian prison that’s on a loop.” The post garnered 3.1 million views and 12,000 likes in one week.
Anti-Trump X account @SeditionistGop posted a still image of the video along with a digitally edited version of the image that replaced the prison behind her with a green background. The user stated: “The prison video background is a loop OBVIOUSLY. At about the 17 second mark, the video ends and the loop begins.” The post accumulated 12,500 views and 90 likes in a day.
Actually: The video is authentic, according to a NewsGuard analysis of the clip.
NewsGuard ran the video through media verification tool InVid and found no signs of digital tampering.
The men in the background do not appear to be on a repeating loop while Noem speaks. Rather, the men make natural, unsynchronized movements throughout the clip, confirming that the footage was not played multiple times during Noem’s remarks.
Credible news outlets, including The Associated Press (Trust Score: 100/100) and Reuters (Trust Score: 100/100), published photographs of Noem inside the prison and in front of the same cell where the video was recorded.