With threats such as “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”, “Your wife and daughter are going to pay for the trip with their bodies, the coyotes are lying,” or “If you cross illegally into Texas you will be jailed,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott unveiled a new security strategy consisting of a campaign of 40 billboards aimed at deterring those who try to cross the border.
Abbott said during a conference in Wall Ranch, Eagle Pass, that the billboards placed throughout Mexico and Central America are written in several languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, to offer potential migrants who are thinking of leaving their country of origin, and those who are already on the way, “a realistic image” of what will happen to them on their journey or if they cross illegally into Texas.
The goal “is not just to deter them from coming, but to help them understand the consequences of it and for our state to continue taking all necessary measures until President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House,” added the Republican president, who estimated the cost of the strategy at one hundred thousand dollars.
During the presentation, Abbott pointed to a burned “rape tree,” “a place where migrants are sexually assaulted and then their underwear is hung as trophies by coyotes,” and highlighted the “horrible and dangerous journey they make to illegally cross into the United States.”
Texas officials said last November that the state would offer 567 hectares of land near the border to the incoming Trump administration for its mass deportation initiative targeting millions of migrants living in the country and with temporary protections.
The number of migrants apprehended crossing the US-Mexico border soared to record levels after outgoing President Joe Biden took office in 2021, fueling criticism from Abbott and other Republicans.
In 2022, there were 11 million unregulated or temporary migrants in the United States, a number that analysts say has risen to between 13 and 14 million. Those with temporary protections are not immediately deportable and many live in “sanctuary” states.
California was the state with the most undocumented immigrants, with about 2.2 million in 2022, according to estimates by the New York Center for Migration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank. Next came Texas with 1.8 million, then Florida (936,000), New York (672,000), New Jersey (495,000) and Illinois (429,000).
Source: jornada
