Fact Check: Is Department of Homeland Security running its official X account from Israel?

WASHINGTON, DC: A series of viral posts have triggered intense speculation about the US Department of Homeland Security’s official X account and its supposed foreign location. 

A new X feature briefly displaying account localization sparked the confusion and garnered millions of views.

Claim: DHS is operating its official X account from Tel Aviv, Israel

The rumor erupted in late November 2025 after X rolled out a new transparency feature that revealed where accounts were posting from and where they were originally created.

Shortly after the feature appeared, users began circulating a screenshot claiming the US Department of Homeland Security’s verified account was created in Israel and was “based in Tel Aviv.”

One post displaying the screenshot amassed over 39.7 million views and 330,000 likes.

Multiple users also claimed X disabled the new localization feature “20 minutes” after the DHS location was supposedly exposed.

Snopes, however, stated it could not independently confirm that the DHS account’s About page ever displayed this information. Because of this lack of verifiable evidence, the claim required further scrutiny.

Fact Check: Claim is unverified - X says screenshot is wrong, and DHS’ account never publicly displayed its creation location

As of now, the claim remains unrated because no independent party has confirmed that the DHS account ever showed an Israel-based location. But there is significant evidence against the claim.

First, the new feature on X was known to be inaccurate for some accounts.

Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, acknowledged on November 22 that the “account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts”, exactly the type of accounts most likely to be affected, since @DHSgov dates back to 2008.

Bier further stated that X disabled the “creation country” display after discovering inaccuracies in the data and said an upcoming update would correct those errors. He also clarified that no government-verified (gray-check) accounts were ever intended to display creation-country information.

When the DHS rumor began circulating, Bier publicly called it “fake news,” adding that the DHS account never displayed its localization for security reasons.

However, on November 24, after X had turned off the “creation country” display, Snopes confirmed that @DHSgov did show a general “based in US” label, but the popup disclaimer noted that such data “may not be accurate and can change periodically.”

This suggests the localization feature was still unstable and unreliable at the time the rumors spread.

X’s new transparency feature is still being tested and has already caused several misidentifications

The rumored DHS mislabeling isn’t the only controversy triggered by X’s launch of its new location transparency tool.

In the hours following the rollout of X’s new localization feature, users quickly began reporting widespread inaccuracies across the platform. Several US-based influencers suddenly appeared to be posting from European countries, while longtime American political accounts were inexplicably flagged as having been created overseas.

Even inactive and legacy accounts that had shown no recent activity were assigned incorrect geolocations, adding to the confusion and fueling speculation about the feature’s reliability.

Because X shut down part of the feature shortly after launch and has not yet restored full functionality, many of the claims circulating online stem from a glitchy, unstable version of the tool.

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made online.