Texas puts up billboards warning of rape and kidnapping to deter migrants

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched a billboard campaign to deter migrants with graphic warnings that they could be raped and abused by traffickers, vivid messaging that comes as Texas steps up its hard-line approach to illegal immigration ahead of the second Trump administration.

“How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?” reads one of the Spanish language signs, aimed at people in Central American countries including El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Abbott’s office said Thursday. “Many girls are raped by the coyotes you hire.”

“Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies.” reads another. “Coyotes lie. Don’t put your family at risk.” (Coyotes are the name given to smugglers who help migrants cross the border.)

The 40 billboards will be posted in Central America and Mexico and will be written in four languages, the governor said.

In a news conference at the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, Abbott said the campaign aimed both to highlight the sexual abuse migrant women face and to warn that illegal immigrants face arrest and deportation in the United States.

“The message is, ‘Do not risk a dangerous trip just to be arrested and deported,’” Abbott said.

Texas has pumped billions of dollars into border enforcement and fortification as officials position the state to provide a blueprint for the expansive immigration crackdown promised by President-elect Donald Trump, The Washington Post has reported.

The state has also sent hundreds of buses of migrants across the country, typically to liberal areas, in efforts condemned by some civil rights organizations.

The state’s new advertising campaign calls attention to the potential violence and abuse immigrants face as they seek channels to enter the United States illegally. Experts agree that it’s a pressing issue, but some scholars questioned whether the graphic messaging that Abbott deemed “tough medicine” would effectively deter would-be migrants or address the dangers they face from traffickers.

“That is something they already know,” said David Kyle, a sociologist at the University of California at Davis who studies migration and human trafficking.

Advocates and experts agree that migrants attempting to illegally enter the United States are especially vulnerable to kidnapping and abuse. Criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals, excluding Americans, in the Mexican border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros were at their highest levels on record in 2023, Reuters reported last year. The nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America wrote in April that criminal gangs routinely kidnap, sexually abuse and ransom migrants arriving at the southernmost point of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“There is a largely unspoken sexual assault crisis impacting women and children, children migrating to the Texas border,” said Rose Luna, the CEO of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, who spoke with Abbott at Thursday’s news conference. " … We applaud the state in recognizing the silent crisis and for acknowledging and elevating this very serious yet hidden issue.”

Migrants have also allegedly faced sexual abuse from American organizations and authorities. A 15-year-old migrant girl in 2019 accused a Customs and Border Protection officer of groping her while she was detained in an Arizona facility. The Justice Department in July sued a Texas-based nonprofit that contracted with the federal government to shelter unaccompanied migrant children for allegedly sexually abusing the minors in its care.

The billboards carry slogans in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Those placed in Central America warn that migrants could face sexual violence or kidnapping, while those in Mexico state that migrants entering the United States illegally will be jailed.

“We’re here to expose the truth,” Abbott said. “The truth to immigrants who are thinking about coming here.”

Kyle, the sociologist, said that truth was something most seeking to enter the United States are already well aware of.

“There seems to be a misunderstanding on two counts,” Kyle said. “First, that if migrants only knew the dangers, they wouldn’t take the risks. Second, we also seem to have a lack of awareness [of] the depth of the challenges in their home communities.”

A Washington Post review of millions of immigration court records found migrants from Mexico and Central America reported entering the United States to flee instability including gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and the rule of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Asylum claims from “extra-continental” migrants from outside Mexico and Central America - including Chinese immigrants, who were also targeted by Abbott’s billboards - have also surged in recent years.

“Migrants or asylum seekers come for reasons that go well beyond any threatening message that one can put on a bulletin board,” said Brad Jones, a professor of political science at the University of California at Davis.

Republican Gov. Abbott’s office declined to comment further on its campaign and did not immediately respond to a request for comment on concerns about the advertisements’ effectiveness. Illegal border crossings in Texas have declined by 87 percent since the state began its 2021 Operation Lone Star program to crack down on illegal immigration, according to Abbott. Tougher enforcement by Mexican authorities and an asylum cap placed by President Joe Biden over the summer have also lowered detentions at the U.S. border this year, The Post reported.

Think tanks and advocacy groups have argued that U.S. immigration policy has fed many of the factors that created a lucrative environment for criminal groups to thrive at the border and abuse migrants. Toughening border security and other policies - including a Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program briefly restarted under Biden that sent asylum seekers back to Mexico while they waited for their applications to be processed - created a bottleneck of immigrants at the border and left them more vulnerable to extortion and sexual assault by criminal groups, according to the Human Rights Watch and InSight Crime, which studies organized crime in Latin America.