The last thing you expect to see on a billboard is a threat, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott is aiming to sell migrants a very particular image of the Lone Star State: one of treachery and trepidation.
During a press conference in Eagle Pass, Texas in early January, Governor Abbott detailed his plans for the $100,000 construction of more than 40 billboards designed to discourage Mexican and Central American migrants from entering the United States as undocumented immigrants.
The project is already underway, with multiple billboards having been situated in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
“Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies,” reads one of the billboards. This message to migrants declares that if they endeavor to cross the border, “coyotes” (people paid by migrants to bring them across the U.S. border), will rape the women and girls in their family.
Other similar threats of rape aimed at migrants are plastered across the enormous signs in plain white lettering, as are promises of incarceration, kidnapping, and other mysteriously unnamed dangers.
Abbott has posed this racist and xenophobic agenda as one born out of altruism, claiming that the central purpose of billboards like these is “to save their [immigrants’] lives; to save them from sexual assault; save them from being arrested,” but his weak efforts to disguise threats of rape and sexual assault as charitable warnings of “danger ahead” are simply an attempt to make his aggressive anti-immigration tactics appear humanistic.
This is a clear example of an oppression tactic known as Systemic Oppression through Reversed Victim and Offender, or SORVO, through which oppressive groups attempt to justify acts of sexual violence by manipulating narratives and framing oppressed groups as perpetrators of sexual violence.
Another billboard interrogates, “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped? Many girls are raped by the coyotes you hire.”
Statements like these place the blame of sexual violence on migrants themselves, exemplifying two pillars of SORVO: an oppressive group (in this case, the Texas state government) omits sexual violence they or other oppressive groups have committed while sensationalizing acts of sexual violence committed within the oppressed group. Here, Abbott accuses immigrants of perpetrating sexual violence against themselves and simultaneously uses these accusations as threats toward prospective immigrants.
A third billboard, featuring an image of a young girl with her eyes blacked out by a censor bar, declares, “This fourteen-year-old girl was raped by more than 20 men on her way to the border. Protect your family. Change their fate.”
This statement further employs Governor Abbott’s victim blaming, playing into the omission and sensationalization he has enacted through SORVO. Abbott’s billboards place the burden of sexual violence against migrating women and children into the hands of immigrant communities, refusing to acknowledge the lack of action taken by Texas authorities to prevent rapes and assaults from occurring during the immigration process. Additionally, the frequency of sexual violence committed by coyotes would lessen greatly if the United States were to implement robust, efficient, and accessible pathways for immigrants to gain citizenship.
During the Eagle Pass presser, Abbott was joined by Rose Luna, CEO of the Texas Association of Sexual Assault. Luna spoke on the rape and sexual assault faced by many migrants during their trips to the Texas border. While Luna’s speech expressed support for immigrant survivors of sexual violence, her presence was ultimately exploited by Abbott’s office to justify his anti-immigration campaign.
Undocumented immigrants from Central America, especially women and girls, do face sexual violence and abuse at disproportionately high rates while making the journey across the United States border. However, it is necessary to understand that both Luna and Abbott neglected to acknowledge the sexual violence immigrants (both those who are able and unable to receive documentation) are subjected to after entering the U.S, choosing to exclusively highlight instances of rape and sexual assault committed by coyotes along the trek into Texas. 70 percent of ICE detention centers have reported allegations of sexual assault against detainees in U.S. facilities, and according to the Tahirih Justice Center, over half of their clients reported “abuse and exploitation” after entering the U.S.
This purposeful sensationalization of sexual violence committed by coyotes hired by migrants, as well as the deliberate omission of sexual violence suffered after reaching the Texas border, is a subtle, yet transparent example of reversed victim and offender.
As we find ourselves in the midst of a second Trump administration, instances of SORVO like these will only become more frequently used to attack and prejudice immigrants who hope to seek refuge in the United States. Learn the SORVO framework. Recognize when SORVO tactics are being used. Call it out, and hold your representatives accountable.
