As migrant apprehensions were down substantially more in Arizona and California than Texas last month, Governor Greg Abbott sought to reinforce a border security mission on Thursday when he unveiled an outdoor advertisement campaign aimed at scaring people from traveling from the south to the Lone Star State.
Abbott announced on social media that Texas had erected billboards in Mexico and Central America for the sake of deterring migrants from coming here. The novel new twist of psychological warfare that the Republican leader added to an already unprecedented arsenal revolves on warnings that men in those third-world countries can expect their wives and daughters to be raped by the people they pay to smuggle them into the U.S.
"These billboards tell the horror stories of human trafficking & consequences of crossing illegally," the Texas governor explained in a post on X. "This new campaign is to stop the illegal journey from even beginning in the first place."
Abbott is gambling that migrants will cancel trips to his home state because they're more afraid of the potential for sexual violence than the destitution, persecution and suffering their families face every day in their own homelands. But the Texas governor also appears to be using the latest fear mongering tactics to draw attention to himself based on the fact that he has name and title "gobernador" splashed in red across the bottom of the giant signs before the words Texas and Estados Unidos of America.
"Tu esposa y tu hija van a pagar el viaje con su cuerpo," one of the Texas billboards claims. "Los coyotes mienten. No pangos a tu familia en riesgo."
When translated to English, the message essentially says that "your wife and your daughter are going to pay for the trip with their body.
Coyotes lie. Don't put your family at risk."
Another sign poses a question in Spanish that appears to be incomplete. "How much did you pay for your daughter," the billboard inquires. "Many girls are raped by coyotes."
Coyote is a Spanish term for human smuggler. Abbott may have borrowed the term on female bodies as barter for smugglers from a New York Times piece in 2019 about sexual violence at the border. Illegal immigration to the U.S. hit a 20-year high that year when Donald Trump was in the midst of his first term as president. But the Republican Texas governor remained mum on the problem at the time when the GOP had the White House.
Abbott hasn't attempted to substantiate the allegations about rape as a price for families who seek to live the American dream. Abbott promised to eliminate rape here in 2021 when he was attempting to defend the historic Texas abortion ban that included no exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest. But the governor has offered no updates since that time on the progress that the state has or hasn't made in that regard for a goal that other politicians would view as impossible.
After ignoring the historic rates of illegal border crossings when Trump was president, Abbott has contended in recent months that the number of migrants apprehended has gone down 87 percent in Texas as a result of barriers and other actions the state has taken.
While statistics like that are meaningless without sufficient context, the migrant tally that the Border Patrol has logged at the southern border in Texas actually plunged a whopping 244 percent in November compared to the same month in 2023. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported on Thursday that federal agents apprehended 25,391 migrants on or near the Rio Grande in Texas last month - a decrease of 7 percent from the October count.
But the migrant tallies in border states to the west fell even more in November according to an examination of new CBP data. The number of migrants apprehended last month in Arizona was 636 percent lower than it been in November a year ago while falling 184 percent in California during the same span.
The migrant counts were down 44 percent last month in Arizona - a decrease more than six times the size of Texas tally. Migrant apprehensions fell five times more in California in November than they did in Texas compared to the October rates.
While Abbott's efforts may have contributed to the declining numbers in Texas, a comparative look at the entire southern border gives the impression that new restrictions that President Joe Biden's administration imposed in January and June brought about the dramatic drops.
