The office of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has said his wife was not detained in the United States in March, refuting widely shared rumours online. The first lady’s critics claimed she recycled old pictures on social media to make it appear she was back in the archipelago nation but the false posts include a fabricated screenshot.
“You can see here how they’ve been fooling the people but [diehard Duterte supporters] are too smart for this,” reads a Facebook post on March 30.
It included two screenshots apparently taken from First Lady Liza Marcos’s verified account. One shows four photos of an event taken on March 27.
The other is supposedly a collection of over 2,330 photos posted September 26, 2022 which includes a five-photo collage, including the four pictures as the recent post.
“To those who are pro-Marcos, please answer me this, are you still fighting for the right thing?” the post adds.
Rumours that the first lady was held up by law enforcement in Los Angeles surfaced online in early March after she came back from a working visit to the United States (archived link).
The false claims spread after President Marcos’s government handed over former leader Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court to face a crimes against humanity charge tied to his drug war in which thousands were killed (archived link).
The presidential palace dismissed the rumours on March 13 and there have been no official reports that the first lady has been detained in the United States as of April 22 (archived here, here, here).
The images spread elsewhere on Facebook and were cross-posted across multiple platforms such as X, Threads, TikTok and Instagram.
Fabricated screenshot
Keyword searches found one of the screenshots corresponds to a March 29 post on Liza Marcos’s verified Facebook page (archived link).
The caption read: “Cocktail reception to celebrate Women’s Month with lady ambassadors & female spouses of heads of diplomatic missions in the Philippines. Kalayaan Hall, Malacañan Palace, Manila. 27 March 2025.”
A corresponding video of the event was also posted on the same day (archived link).
But the other screenshot supposedly showing the older post has been fabricated.
A review of the photos and video of the event shows foreign envoys who began their assignment in the Philippines after the supposed September 26, 2022 date in the fabricated post.
Ambassadors Yuliia Fediv of Ukraine, Emma Hickey of Ireland, Saija Nurminen of Finland and Megawati Dato Paduka Haji Manan of Brunei can be seen in one of the photos (archived here, here, here and here)
Fediv was posted to the Philippines in March 2025; Hickey and Nurminen in September 2024; and Manan in March 2023.
A review of the video found more ambassadors whose posting came after 2022.
Read the full story on AFP Fact Check.