No, Obama did not urge undocumented migrants to vote in the 2016 US presidential election

A decade-old video excerpt has revived a false claim that Barack Obama urged undocumented migrants to vote in the 2016 US presidential election.

The allegation says Obama told undocumented immigrants to cast ballots and promised that immigration authorities would not arrest them. Lithuanian Facebook users recently reshared the claim, including a warning that the US military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should guard polling places to keep undocumented migrants away.

The clipped footage can give a misleading impression because it shows Obama urging people to vote without including the full exchange. The widely shared extract lasts about one minute, while the complete interview runs for more than six minutes.

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If you want to vote and you show up at your polling place, they cannot stop you from voting. They cannot stop you from voting. If people want to find out how to vote, they can go to iwillvote.com. The truth is, we constantly give away our power. You know, we say to ourselves: ‘Oh, this is hard, it doesn’t matter, it won’t make a difference.’ And the government is counting on us giving away our power.

In the full interview, Obama was speaking about US citizens who had undocumented relatives or acquaintances. He said these citizens sometimes feared that voting could harm their undocumented family members, even though they themselves had the legal right to participate.

The interview was released shortly before the November 2016 election by Mitú, a digital media company serving a Latino audience. Obama appeared with actor Gina Rodriguez in an effort to address common voting myths. Federal law prohibits undocumented people from voting in US federal elections.

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Many millennials, Dreamers, undocumented residents, I call them citizens because they contribute to this country’s prosperity, are afraid to vote. So, if I vote, will immigration find out where I live? Will they come to my family and deport us?