These Walmart portable toilets are for building works, not migrant camp
Person in the TikTok video said, "I wasn’t being serious and never expected to blow up like it did.
(Reuters) - A Tennessee Walmart put temporary portable restrooms outside its store to provide access to bathrooms during remodeling works and not as part of a camp to house migrants, as suggested in a clip posted to social media.
The video, which surfaced on TikTok and Facebook shows an individual walking outside a Walmart store and pointing at outdoor portable restrooms.
The person in the recording says, “A couple of days ago, they said that all of a sudden, Tennessee is the new hot spot for migrants and then, all of a sudden, our local Walmarts are putting up camps with bathrooms in their parking lots.”
“For entertainment purposes” is visible across the bottom of the clip. When contacted for comment, the person in the TikTok video said, "I wasn’t being serious and never expected to blow up like it did."
While most of the comments responding to the video are saying the bathrooms are likely there due to remodeling works, some people took the video seriously.
Comments include, “Turning America into a Third World Country Sadly,” and “Well all I got to say is don't come to my damn neighborhood.”
Reuters located the clip to the parking lot outside the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Sevierville, Tennessee.
The portable toilets were not built as part of a camp to house migrants.
Joe Pennington, Director at Walmart Press Office, said on Feb. 22 that the temporary bathrooms are in place while the store is undergoing a “remodel,” and the restrooms inside will re-open “in about five days.”
The store’s Facebook page features multiple posts alerting customers to an upcoming remodel, uploaded in December and January.
Google Streetview taken in February, shows portable bathrooms outside the store, but no external housing camp.
VERDICT
False. Portable bathrooms were set up outside the Walmart store in Tennessee to provide restrooms during a remodel, a Walmart spokesperson said, not as part of a camp to house migrants.
