Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to strategically place 40 billboards throughout Central America and Mexico with messages warning unlawful migrants of the “horrific realities” they face of their try and cross into the Lone Star state.
Abbott unveiled six renderings Thursday of the billboards — which can be seen in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico and alongside the Texas-Mexico border — in entrance of a burned-down rape tree, at Wall Ranch in Eagle Cross, Texas.
“These billboards tell the horror stories of human trafficking,” Abbott stated. “They implore these individuals in Central America to think about the violent, horrific realities of what is going to occur to the ladies and youngsters they carry with them.
In a single billboard, which featured a pregnant girl, Abbott warned, “Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies.”
“This 14-year-old girl was raped by more than 20 men on her way to the border. Protect your family. Change their fate,” one other billboard learn.
“How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?” a 3rd billboard learn because the grim message is plastered over the face of a smiling little one.
Abbott stated that officers have arrested “thousands” of migrants who’ve bypassed the border wall, his controversial razor wire fencing and the floating buoy border wall — which he plans to broaden forward of the surge earlier than President-elect Trump takes workplace on Jan. 20.
“Through Operation Lone Star, we have done some incredible work to stop illegal border crossers,” Abbott stated. “But this new effort is about stopping their journey from even beginning in the first place. Until President Donald Trump is back in the White House to secure our border once again, we will continue to take every step necessary to defend Texas.”
The messages that can be displayed all through Mexico — additionally written in Chinese language, Arabic and Russian — informed migrants that they’d be jailed in the event that they entered Texas.
The billboard advertising marketing campaign will value roughly $100,000.
“This is tough medicine,” Abbott stated. “But we want no more rape trees in Texas. Do not make the dangerous trek to Texas.”
Rancher Kimberly Wall expressed her concern for native security after seeing “lots of women” who have been raped and overwhelmed and “left to die” close to her residence.
“It makes you terrified to go out of your own house and enjoy your own property,” Wall stated. “I know my husband has found three different rape trees and burned them down. You don’t know if you’ll be attacked by one of the men hiding in the brush. We all want a better life for everybody.”
Trump has vowed to enact the biggest deportation in historical past and declare a “national emergency” to make use of “military assets to reverse the Biden invasion” and deport unlawful migrants.
Final month, a Lone Star State supply informed The Publish that Texas officers are a plan that may ship newly arrived unlawful migrants on to ICE holding facilities.
The proposed plan would make it in order that migrants may be processed rapidly for deportation.
Underneath the proposed plan, buses chartered by Texas from border cities can be rerouted from sanctuary cities together with New York, Chicago and Denver to federal detention facilities to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers course of them extra rapidly, the supply stated.
