I got duped by an ICE hoax. Let's talk about it.

The story started with a few alarming calls and an article that described in detail one of our greatest fears: a dozen members of our community had been abducted. Even worse, they had been taken from the heart and soul of many immigrant and culturally rich communities - the grocery market.

As soon as I had the information paused and went to confirm everything I could. I checked the news site that distributed the article and called family friends and community members to see all who could be accounted for. The problem was some of them wouldn’t pick up, they went silent.

When you’re trying to figure out whether or not someone has been abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the process is extremely messy. Sometimes family members are notified and the abductees are allowed to contact their members and sometimes they aren’t. In this case we had to assume that those who we could not get a hold of could be in danger

As I combed through the article I confirmed many things. The one thing that kept standing out to me was the detail. The article explained the exit in our beloved store, the layout, the activities folks were doing and included the name of a community member that was in fact real and regularly shopped at the store.

This combined with the lack of contact from those who are usually very communicative vibrant people was enough to move to raise awareness. I did what I do best, I sent emails out to news sites to ask them to further investigate, I began to contact officials and I made a video and thread post to get the story visible online.

The following day, after multiple days of silence the store released an official notice on social media: there had been no raid and the store was functioning as normal. Now as a person who is also Nigerian, I had immediate suspicions. Was the statement a way to get people back in the store, or was it true? I spent hours trying to call to confirm but I was met with dodgy behavior on the phone and a refusal to confirm any questions. One of my mutuals happened to be landing in the area and offered to go to the store once she could. As I waited I continued calling around.

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