The devastating Kerr County, Texas, flooding on July 4 left more than 100 county residents dead. About a week later, social media posts told a heartfelt rescue story involving the Kerr County sheriff’s family and Mexican rescuers.
But the story about Sheriff Larry L. Leitha did not happen.
“Larry Leda (sic) says to apply for a green card for the Mexican rescue team that rescued his family and that they will not be restricted from entering or exiting the U.S. border in the future,” a voice styled as a female newscaster says in a July 12 X post. The X version of the video, which originated on TikTok, misspells Leitha’s name, and had more than 810,000 views as of July 14.
The video’s narrator also says the sheriff “who is known for being tough on immigrants has finally broken his silence by standing in front of camera with a solemn look on his face saying ‘I owe them my family’s life.’”
A July 13 Instagram post shared the same video with the same misspelling in the caption, “Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leda said he would apply for a green card for the Mexican rescue team that saved his family.”
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(Screenshot of X post.)
We found no evidence that Leitha made the comments in multiple press conferences where he gave updates about flood recovery.
The Kerr County’s Sheriffs’ Office website also has no information backing the video. PolitiFact reached out to the office but did not receive an immediate response.
PolitiFact also found no news reports saying that Leitha’s family was affected by the floods.
The videos’ credibility issues go beyond misspelled names, sketchy narrators that sound like they were made with artificial intelligence and baseless details. The videos don’t list any sources. PolitiFact looked on TVEyesa TV monitoring service, to see if a newscast aired with the Leitha story, but we found no results.
Hive Moderationa program that detects whether footage was AI generated, revealed that 95% of the audio in the video is likely to be AI generated.
The video also said that Mexico’s president sent “a specialized rescue team” to help with recovery and that the team “marched across the border.” There is no evidence or official government statements that show Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed rescuers to Texas.
According to local Texas reportsthe Mexican rescue teams that went to help during the disaster’s aftermath, such as Los Jaguares, Los Topos and the Civil Protection and Fire Department of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, did it as independent organizations. Radio station KUT 90.5 said that Fundación 911, a binational nonprofit that works with firefighters on both sides of the border, helped the Acuña firefighters get humanitarian permits.
Snopes also reported that the deployment of these groups was in response from “the U.S. based organization, Texas EquuSearch, and was not coordinated by the Mexican federal government.”
During a July 8 press conference, a reporter asked Sheinbaum about a July 7 post by the actress Viola Davis praising Sheinbaum for sending rescue teams to Texas, but she did not take the credit. Sheinbaum said in Spanish, “Honor where honor is due. The personnel who went to Texas are the firefighters from Acuña in Coahuila. I’m going to name them because they truly deserve all our recognition.”
Since there is no evidence that Leitha said that Mexican rescue teams saved his family from the Texas floods or that he applied for green cards for the rescuers, we rate the claim False.
