Did a Mexican search and rescue team sent to the scene of the July 2025 flooding in Kerr County, Texas rescue a sheriff's daughter, as social media posts claim? No, that's not true: Although Mexican rescue crews were in fact sent to help when Independence Day rain caused flash flooding along the Guadalupe River, there is no publicly available documentation of any rescue of any sheriff's family members by Mexican rescue workers. There is also no evidence-based reporting that any sheriff's family was rescued by anyone during the flash floods that killed at least 132 people.
A variety of social media posts have included the claim, including this July 12, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the RussLahart Facebook account under the title "Republicans, any and all of them do not deserve to be elected representatives or representing anyone". The audio opened:
This is a really amazing story that we gotta really scream from the mountaintops about these Mexican rescue workers. They saved this racist sheriff's daughter and grand daughter and he's changed his tune.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time this fact check was written:
Using Google News' index of thousands of news pages and Yahoo! News' index of partner news sites and wire services, Lead Stories located no reporting about rescue of any sheriff's family members by credible news outlet. Using the search terms "Sheriff's AND daughter AND rescue AND Mexican", not one news story was found by Google News matching the claim. Yahoo! News' search similarly turned up no such reports, but several versions of the false claim that Mexican rescuers saved the family members of an anti-immigrant sheriff.
Lead Stories searched several news reports about a rescue crew from Protección Civil in Nuevo León, Mexico that travelled to Kerr County to assist local search and rescue teams. FOX 13 reporting about the crew included no mention of any rescue of relatives of a Texas sheriff.
Lead Stories also reviewed the Facebook page of the Nuevo León rescue team, finding no mention that it saved any sheriff's family members while helping crews search for the missing, nor mention of any other Mexican rescue team saving any family members of a Texas sheriff.
The Kerr County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page, manually searched by Lead Stories, included no report of any such rescue as of July 14, 2025.
Similarly, the personal Facebook page of Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha included no posts about any such rescue of his family or any other sheriff's family, as of July 14, 2025.
A dispatcher on duty July 14, 2025, said they had heard no such thing and asked that Lead Stories contact the official media spokesperson. Lead Stories will add to this fact check any relevant response from the designated spokesperson.
