Donald Trump campaign footage of 'migrants at US Mexican border' was actually taken in Morocco

The Trump campaign will spend $2 million a week airing the advertisement

The narrator's voice says Donald Trump will "stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border" (Donald Trump website)

Donald Trump's election campaign used footage from Morrocco to represent migrants crossing the southern border between Mexico and the United States in his first major television advertisement, a fact-checking website has claimed.

Twenty-two seconds into the campaign video – which gives some of the most divisive proposals of Mr Trump’s campaign a starring role – a stern-sounding narrator says of Mr Trump, “He’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for”. The clip then shows dozens of people hurriedly approaching a border fence.

The website Politifact says the border footage used in the video is not from the United States’ “southern border” – in fact, it is 5,000 miles away, in a small Spanish enclave on the mainland of Morocco. The video clip used by Trump’s campaign team, they claim, has removed the time stamp of May 2014 and the logo of the Italian television network, RepubblicaTV.

Politifact – which fact-checks statements by US politicians – says they have traced the footage back to 2014 when migrants were crossing the border into Melilla. A clip, from May 2014, is available on Youtube. The Trump campaign also appears to have added a darkening filter to the clip giving it a more sinister look.

A spokeswoman for Mr Trump told the website she did not know the source of the video included in the campaign advertisement and that she doesn’t speak for the video production company.

The advertisement was also used to repeat Mr Trump’s controversial call for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims being allowed to enter the US. It also threatens to “quickly cut off the head” of the so-called Islamic State and “take their oil”.

A clip from a 2014 Youtube video, bearing the logo Repubblica TV (Youtube)

Trump’s campaign says he intends to spend two million dollars - or £1.36 million – a week on the advertisement, set to begin airing today across the first two states to cast votes in the Republican nominating contest.