Did ICE arrest Mexican nationals who helped flood recovery efforts, and did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott say "I support ICE deporting the Mexicans who helped during the floods"? No, that's not true: A viral TikTok video contained a fabricated story about ICE "aiming weapons" at the rescuers and "loading them into vans". A clip of Abbott contained fake audio and mouth movements, most likely the product of AI.
The story and footage originated in a July 13, 2025, post on TikTok (archived here) which contained the embedded headline "Mexican rescuers arrested in flood", and garnered seven million views in just one day.
It began with what appeared to be a clip of Abbott saying:
I support ICE deporting the Mexicans who helped during the floods. They didn't have authorization, I've confirmed it.
A voiceover narration then recounted the fabricated story. The following is a transcript:
While dozens of families were calling for help from their rooftops, these volunteers crossed the border with trained dogs, ropes, and first aid kits. They carried no weapons or drugs. They came to help, but were treated liked criminals.
Immigration agents aimed their guns at them, yelled that they had no authorization to be there, threw them to the ground, and loaded them into a van as if they were criminals. It was all caught on video. And the worst part? Just a few feet away, a family was trapped inside their home. Noone came to rescue them because the only people helping were already in handcuffs.
The most outrageous part was the reaction of the Texas governor. Instead of condemning what happened, he supported it. He said anyone who crosses the border without permission, even to save lives, must be detained. You heard that right -- saving lives is now illegal.
One of the rescuers managed to say, before being taken away, "We didn't come to invade, we came to help."
This scene shows more than just an arrest, it marks a line that's been crossed, a warning of what's already happening -- that even those who come to save lives can be treated as enemies.
Comment "Shame" if you believe this crossed every line, and share this video before it gets deleted or buried under water and silence.
The video can be watched below:
@user876153022127 #Texas #Mexico #breakingnews #news #america #usa #fyp ♬ original sound - user876153022127
The original underlying footage of Abbott was recorded during a July 8, 2025, news conference in Kerrville, Texas (archived here). This side-by-side comparison shows the same official with the name badge "MARTIN", in the background holding a piece of paper:
(Image source: Lead Stories collage of screenshots from: tiktok.com/@user876153022127; www.youtube.com/@ABCNews)
In the original video, Abbott never mentions "ICE deporting the Mexicans who helped during the floods" and that audio is fake, likely the product of AI, as are the fake mouth movements digitally added to the footage.
The underlying story is also false. As of July 14, 2025, ICE had not arrested or detained any volunteers who came from Mexico (archived here) to help in rescue and recovery efforts.
If they had "aimed their guns at them" and "loaded them into a van", and if that really had been "all caught on video", it would have formed the basis of immediate and widespread news coverage.
However, Google News and Yahoo! News searches (archived here and here) for the words "Mexican", "rescue", "Texas", "flood", "arrest", and "immigration" yielded no relevant results, further underlining the fictional nature of the story.
