Inside El Tímpano’s efforts to help combat disinformation

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The Weekly Dispatch

Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.

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Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Gabriela Calvillo Alvarez, El Timpano’s South Alameda County reporter.

This past year, fear and confusion have impacted immigrant communities as dis- and misinformation around potential ICE raids, alleged ICE sightings, and legal scams have flourished online and in social media chat groups. As El Tímpano’s community outreach coordinator, Etel Calles, who leads our Disinformation Defense workshops, noted last month, “immigrants receive texts promising signing bonuses for jobs that don’t exist, fake rental opportunities, or warnings that unpaid tolls could get them arrested. The newest scams are designed to rob immigrants of thousands of dollars by faking immigration hearings.”

As a result, Bay Area county rapid response networks and other local organizations, including our own, have tried to combat the spread in real time.  

The Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP), which relaunched in December 2024, now has approximately 500 trained volunteers who verify ICE activity in different parts of the county and holds Know Your Rights and misinformation workshops. 

Angel Ibarra, a program manager for Centro Legal de la Raza (an ACILEP partner), who has conducted these workshops, told me that outreach and education is the best way to combat the fear that comes with seeing dis- and misinformation on social media or on WhatsApp groups. But it’s a delicate balance when dealing with platforms also serve as sources of information.

“I think we want to be really intentional with how we conduct those [workshops] moving forward,” he said. “We do understand the panic. We do understand the fear. We don’t want to disrupt those channels [of communication] because they are very helpful, you know. The WhatsApp channel, Facebook groups and whatnot, they are helpful, but I think with a little bit more control.” 

Etel Calles has led El Tímpano’s Disinformation Defense workshops in Oakland, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Hayward, and across the East Bay since 2023. These workshops grew out of an earlier El Tímpano initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic called “Comunidades Informadas” (informed communities), which aimed to stop the spread of misinformation during that time among Spanish-speaking immigrant and Mayan-Mam communities. 

Each of Etel’s workshops begins by differentiating between “disinformation” and “misinformation,” which are often used interchangeably, she told me. She explains to workshop attendees that “disinformation” is false information with the intent to deceive while “misinformation” is false information that you are not aware is not true. 

She also goes in-depth to explain different political, financial, and social motivators behind dis- and misinformation. “I teach people to pause before sharing, to ask: “Did I see this myself? Do I know the source?” she said. “Instead of forwarding a social media post that could cause panic, we inform them about rapid response hotlines and established agencies, so they know exactly who to call for help with health, housing, jobs, and immigration,” she said. 

Last year, Etel did five workshops, and this year she’s done 27 and counting. I spoke with her about what she has observed and what the community response to the workshops has been during a year in which federal immigration enforcement has ramped up significantly for our Q&A below.

What has been the evolution of the Disinformation Defense workshops over this past year, especially in light of the new administration’s ramped up immigration enforcement? 

Etel: Last year, I did a total of maybe five misinformation workshops. But as soon as Trump was inaugurated, we started seeing so many screenshots that said, “ICE was seen here,” “ICE is on this street in Hayward,” “ICE is picking up people or harassing people in Oakland.” Just a lot of these images that I now use in some of the misinformation workshops to show how much all of that noise and created content really was getting under [people’s] skin and into places, even in your own personal spaces – your WhatsApp groups, your YouTube pages, it just finds its way in.

Since January, we started to get more requests for the workshops. We worked with a lot with different parent groups, community centers, senior centers, children’s centers, and also some staffers like teachers and staff and families of different schools throughout Oakland, Hayward. And so it multiplied. It’s a really good welcome tool for the families. It has aha moments where people feel like, “Oh okay, I understand what disinformation and misinformation is. I understand how each individual can play a part in how much it gets spread or not.” And [you learn] to be more cautious of what you’re seeing: Is it verified? Is this something you can trust? Does it come from someone that you know? Is the site even real, right? So making people more aware of that has been critical.

What have you heard from workshop participants throughout this year? What differences have you observed as the year has progressed? 

Etel: I have seen a lot of change between January and even this past week, when there was [reported] ICE activity at Cherryland Elementary School and in Fremont. People really took to heart everything that we’ve been teaching them all along. And everything that ACILEP has done to take the time and the training to send someone to go out and verify [what is being reported]. Then people can come back and say, “Okay, it was either a hoax or it wasn’t what we thought it was.” But at least they are understanding how misinformation boils up, gets to the surface, and then can either spread like fire, or you can wait for the right people and the right protocol to work.

We’ve seen less of these [ICE] screenshots now. We have seen more families supporting each other and reminding each other of their rights. In some of the WhatsApp chats that I’m in, like Padres Unidos de Cherryland, I was able to see what a big difference it made that people were not posting these screenshots of ICE presence. To the contrary, it was: “Remember not everything you see is real. Remember it may be somebody making a false statement. Remember your rights. Remember to report it to ACILEP. Remember to verify where this is coming from.” 

It has been really beautiful to see the transition. Just even in this small group of 290 parents, the majority of whom have been part of these workshops, or have heard of, or have seen me post some of these steps. All of that really empowers the community.

If you’re based in South Alameda County and have any tips or ideas to share, you can reach me at gcalvillo@eltimpano.org or through Signal at 510-919-4207. 

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, we will see you next week. 

The interview above was edited and shortened for length.

Ear to the Ground

El Tímpano’s text messaging (SMS) service reaches more than 6,000 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. In October, we asked our subscribers if they’d encountered false information about ICE raids, and how that affected them. Here are a few of their responses: 

Afecta bastante a la gente porque nos da miedo salir; nos da miedo seguir con la actividad diaria, ya sea laboral o personal. 

It affects people a lot because we are afraid to go out; we are afraid to go on with our daily activities, whether it is work or personal. 

—Richmond resident 

Da temor ya que algunas veces la información es falsa y confunden a la gente diciendo que es ICE, y son policías

It’s frightening because sometimes the information is false, and they confuse people by saying that it is ICE, and they are police officers.

—Castro Valley resident 

Siempre en redes sociales suben información, pero en realidad no estoy segura de si es verdadera o falsa. Por las dudas, evitamos las áreas donde supuestamente hay presencia de ICE.

There is always information posted on social media, but I am not really sure if it is true or false. To be safe, we avoid areas where there is supposedly an ICE presence.

—Oakland resident

Sí, he visto información que, al momento, se nota que no es cierta. Lo mejor es no leerlo porque sí afecta emocionalmente.

Yes, I have seen information that, at the moment, it is obvious that it is not true. It is best not to read it because it does affect you emotionally.

—Hayward resident

California

• You can now report crimes by federal agents in California

• Pregnant immigrants held for months in detention despite rules against it

National

• Trump administration threatens to withhold SNAP management funds from states that don’t share data

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