How TikTok and other social media have reshaped the way people migrate to the US: 'Their only lifeline'

At the migrant camp sprawled along the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego, Diana Rodriguez kept hearing chatter about a confusing TikTok video.

It was Thursday and the 30-year-old, who grew up in a mining village in Colombia, had already been camped out along the towering steel bollards for two days when whispers began to spread about the social media post. It claimed that Title 42, a policy the U.S. government used during the COVID-19 pandemic to quickly expel many migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum, wouldn't expire until June.

But Rodriguez had done extensive research before leaving her nation's capital 11 days earlier and knew the policy was supposed to expire that evening. The post, she figured, must be a ploy to scam migrants into paying for legal advice.

Another TikTok video, which has been viewed 17 million times, falsely claimed in big, bold letters that, starting May 11, migrants "cannot be deported." Soon,