Ring is “alerting people about (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids.”

Social media posts claiming Ring, a video doorbell company, alerted users to immigration raids are misleading. 

“Why is @ring, an @amazon company alerting people about ice raids,”  one Instagram post said Feb. 3, referring to ICE, or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The post included a screenshot of a notification that appeared to be from the Ring app that was titled “Neighborhood Alert near Phoenix.” It said, “ICE — immigration is near be aware.” 

The Instagram user also tagged Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon, which owns Ring. Ring sells video doorbells, cameras and other security products, and runs apps that let customers control the products. 

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Other social media users also shared the image and claimed Ring was alerting users about immigration raids. 

Although the message in the photo appeared on the Ring app, the company did not send it. The message came from a user of Ring’s Neighbors app. 

Neighbors lets people post text and images about crime and safety, local updates or questions to other users in their area. Anyone can use Neighbors, including people who lack Ring devices. 

A separate app, called Ring, is used to control Ring devices. People can see posts and receive notifications from the Neighbors app in the Ring app, and both apps let users customize which notifications they receive by topic. 

The screenshot circulating online appears to show a Neighbors notification that a customer received on the Ring app. PolitiFact couldn’t independently verify whether the Neighbors post shown in the photo was authentic. 

In an email, Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels said the company does not notify users about immigration enforcement. 

“Ring is not notifying customers about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity,” Daniels said. “Ring customers who have Neighbors App notifications enabled may be notified about posts authored by other Neighbors App users in their location.”

Ring’s community guidelines for Neighbors don’t mention posts about immigration, but the post does not appear to have violated the app’s guidelines. Ring lets users post about “police, fire and ambulance activity.” But the guidelines prohibit people from posting political content or promoting or attacking ideologies. 

Under President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been conducting high-profile arrest operations nationwide. in his second term’s first weeks. Trump’s immigration officials have said they’ve targeted people with prior criminal records and public safety threats for deportation. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested an average of 788.5 noncitizens per day between Jan. 23 and Jan. 31, according to daily announcements. (In fiscal year 2024 under President Joe Biden, the agency arrested an average of 310.8 noncitizens per day.) 

The Arizona Republic reported that In the two weeks after Trump took office, immigration officials arrested 565 people in the Phoenix area, which the Neighbors’ post mentioned. The newspaper added that many people arrested in Phoenix were not charged with violent crimes, but were charged with entering the country illegally or reentering the country after deportation. 

Our ruling 

Social media users said the Ring doorbell company was “alerting people about ICE raids.”

The alert did not come from the company. It came from a user-generated post on the company’s Neighbors platform. 

We rate the claim that Ring notified users of immigration raids False.