In early July 2025, as flooding damaged (archived) parts of Texas and left more than 100 people dead, a claim circulated online that Gov. Greg Abbott said that if God came into the state illegally he would be deported.
For example, one TikTok user posted a video (archived) in which it was claimed that Abbott said: "If God himself came into Texas illegally he'd be deported." The footage had amassed more than 436,000 views as of this writing.
Similarly, on July 8, a Threads user wrote (archived): "The Texas Governor had said 'If God was an illegal they'd deport him too," before connecting his alleged comment to the tragedy in Texas by writing: "12 HOURS LATER, FLOOD."
(keela_gibson/threads)
Similar posts appeared on YouTube (archived) and X (archived), where each one included a similar version of the above quote. They also suggested the flooding was related to Abbott's alleged remark about deporting God.
However, searches of Google, Bing (archived) and DuckDuckGo (archived) produced no evidence that Abbott ever made such a statement about God and deportation in his public statements or media appearances, nor did searches of his social media profiles. Had a sitting governor made such a statement about immigration policy, news outlets would likely have reported on it; however, this was not the case.
When asked whether the quote was real, Abbott's press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said via email: "
The earliest version of this claim appeared to originate from a TikTok account called ElMundoAhora on July 6. While the original video has since been deleted, the account reposted (archived) similar content on July 8.
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If God were illegal, we would deport him. That's what the governor of Texas said yesterday morning. Not even 12 hours passed and a flood like never before fell on the city, leaving many dead and missing among them. More than 26 girls in a camp who so far cannot be found. Divine punishment karma is simply the wrath of God or God just wanted to punish the arrogance of this man. What is certain is that Texas is receiving God's punishment.
Analysis of the video showed several signs that the audio narration was artificially generated rather than recorded by a human speaker, indicating that it was not a genuine news broadcast.
The narration contained repetitive phrasing, including the line "Se habían visto inundaciones, pero nunca así se habían visto lluvias intensas, pero no de esta magnitud," which translated to "there had been floods, but never like this had there been intense rains, but not of this magnitude." This sentence used the word "pero" (meaning "but") twice to connect repetitive ideas about flooding and rain intensity, creating redundant phrasing that is uncommon in natural speech.
Resemble AI, a deepfake detection tool used to examine the voice in the video, identified the narration as "fake." While the voice closely mimicked the tone and speaking style of Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo, who appeared on the screen at the start of the video, the analysis revealed indicators of synthetic production, including consistent pitch levels and absent micro-pauses that typically occur between phrases in natural speech. These results indicated that the video employed artificial intelligence (AI) voice cloning technology to falsely attribute scripted content to an actual public figure.