Social media users are sharing a video that appears to show a Minneapolis man admitting in a television interview to taking an hourly payment to protest US President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement after a federal agent fatally shot a woman in the Minnesota city. But the clip is AI generated, as is evident from the floating watermark for OpenAI’s Sora tool in the frame.
“BREAKING: This clown gets paid $20/hr to ‘protest’ against ICE!” says a January 11, 2026 post sharing the video on Threads . “It’s straight-up bought and paid for radical theater! Who’s signing the checks?”
The short video depicts a man resembling right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley -- whose widely viewed but disputed video accusing Somali-owned child care facilities in Minneapolis of fraud precipitated the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to the city -- interviewing a Black man holding a picket sign on the street.
The interviewee in the supposed news broadcast says he does not have a job but was out protesting for $20 per hour.
“Yeah, they give us some money,” the man says, as text in the lower third places the interview in Minneapolis and reads: “Paid to protest?”
The clip spread across platforms as demonstrators braved frigid weather for multiple days to rally in Minneapolis against the fatal January 7 shooting of a woman by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
The victim, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was hit at point-blank range as she apparently tried to drive away from the masked agents who were crowding around her vehicle, which they said was blocking their way.
Some posts sharing the video came from self-described satire accounts but, nevertheless, prompted users to claim the clip exposed " paid protesters .”
The clip is, in fact, a product of artificial intelligence.
The video includes a floating watermark for Sora , OpenAI’s text-to-video generator.
Other irregularities include a logo in the chyron and on the microphone for “WMIN 7,” a supposed news organization that does not appear to exist in Minnesota or elsewhere, and nonsensical text on the interviewee’s sign and other posters in the background.
The video also shows daylight despite being timestamped to 5:44 pm, which would be after sunset in the city in January.
A TikTok handle visible in the clip traces the video to the account " @kingcali1982 ,” which posted it January 10 with a caption tagging Shirley and a label saying: “Contains AI-generated media.”
The account is full of AI creations, including other fakes of Shirley.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis here and here .
