Texas launches billboard campaign in Mexico, Central America to warn migrants

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By Karen Brooks Harper | Dallas Morning News (TNS)

Texas is launching a $100,000 billboard campaign in Mexico and Central America to highlight the risks of crossing into the state illegally — including incarceration and sexual assault.

“We’re here to expose the truth to immigrants who are thinking about coming here. The truth about the traffickers who assault so many of the women and children along the way,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday during a news conference at a private ranch in Eagle Pass.

The billboards began going up on Wednesday along major migrant pathways, warning that undocumented entry into the U.S. through Texas risks incarceration by U.S. authorities and rape by the traffickers who are bringing them across the border.

One warns that wives and daughters “will pay for their trip with their bodies.”

“How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?” another one reads.

“Do not make the dangerous trek to Texas,” Abbott said. “The message is: do not risk a dangerous trip just to be arrested and deported.”

Some 85% of undocumented immigrants in Texas come from Mexico and Central America, with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala representing three of the top five origin countries, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The billboards will be posted in several languages, including Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic, Abbott said.

The new effort comes as the state buys ranch lands for potential mass deportation sites and Abbott eyes nearly $3 billion for border initiatives.

Abbott unveiled the plan less than a month before the Legislature begins debate over the state budget – including the governor’s request for new money for his Operation Lone Star border security initiative, which has already cost taxpayers $11 billion.

Joining him Thursday was Texas Border Czar Mike Banks, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin, Adjutant General of Texas Major Thomas Suelzer, Texas Association Against Sexual Assault CEO Rose Luna, and private ranch owners Kimberly and Martin Wall.

A recording of the event can be seen on Abbott’s Facebook page.

Abbott’s border policies catapulted him into the national spotlight earlier this year when he refused to back down to the federal government’s orders to remove buoys and razor wire from the Rio Grande River, which constitutes Texas’ border with Mexico.

His fight began years before.

Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, deploying National Guard soldiers and state troopers to the border with Mexico after saying he was frustrated with President Joe Biden’s policies related to immigration enforcement.

The goal was to make border crossings more difficult by installing razor wire and other physical barriers along the Rio Grande. Law enforcement began arresting suspected undocumented migrants for trespassing and other state criminal charges as part of the operation.

For the upcoming legislative session, which starts in January, Abbott wants the new money to cover those border security operations through 2027 – including busing, barriers, migrant-processing centers and one full-time employee to manage the funds, according to his budget request.

Critics of the governor’s initiatives say the funding request – which would park the money in Abbott’s disaster fund – would give him too much discretion over too much tax money to spend on programs that are dangerous and ineffective.

However, officials from Abbott’s office point to drops in the number of crossings as evidence of his programs’ successes.

This week’s announcement comes after the state bought a ranch in Rio Grande City. Texas officials offered it as the site for detention facilities to help the incoming Trump administration with proposed mass deportations. Portions of a border wall have already been built at the site.

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has said the state is searching for additional land to aid the federal effort.

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