Deepfake Video Claims ICE Arrested Mexicans Who Helped Rescue Texas Flood Victims
What happened: Liberal U.S. social media users are spreading a deepfake video of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to advance baseless claims that immigration agents arrested Mexicans who volunteered during the early July 2025 flood rescue efforts in Texas.
Context: On July 4, flash floods struck in and around Kerr County in south-central Texas, killing at least 133 people, while another 97 people were still missing as of July 17.
Among the emergency responders were volunteers from a fire department in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico — a city near the U.S. border, 150 miles from Kerr County — according to multiple news outlets. The Mexican firefighters drew attention from liberal U.S. social media users, who commended their efforts amid the Trump administration’s border crackdown.
A closer look: Starting on July 12, liberal social media users posted a video showing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott supposedly stating: “I support ICE deporting the Mexicans who helped during the floods. They didn't have authorization, I’ve confirmed it.” After Abbott finishes speaking, an unseen narrator in the video says that the Mexican volunteers were “treated like criminals” by ICE agents who “pointed their guns at them” and “threw them to the ground.”
You can watch the video here:
Film director and liberal activist Morgan J. Freeman (not the Oscar-winning actor) reposted the video on X and stated, “Mexicans who saved lives during the Texas flood are now being arrested.” The post received 1.1 million views and 25,000 likes in one day.
Liberal Bluesky user @mary1kathy.bsky.social also posted the Abbott deepfake, captioned, "rescuers from Mexico arrested by ICE and Hot Wheels condones the arrest!” (“Hot wheels” is a pejorative nickname for Abbott, who uses a wheelchair.) The post received 729 likes and 525 reposts in one day.
Actually: The video of Abbott’s comments is a deepfake.
NewsGuard analyzed the video’s audio with AI detection tool Hive, which concluded that the video was 99.6 percent likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
The footage used in the deepfake matches a video of Abbott at a Kerr County news conference that was published on YouTube by ABC News (NewsGuard Trust Score: 87.5/100) on July 8, 2025. NewsGuard reviewed the footage and transcript and found that Abbott never said anything about Mexican volunteers or their supposed arrests.
Asked if there was any factual basis for the claim, Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris told NewsGuard in a July 14 email, “of course not.” NewsGuard found no reports of the arrests in credible media or official statements.
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