“Trump and his enablers in Congress built this violent and cruel ICE deportation machine and aimed it at our communities”
Billboards in GEORGIA, IOWA, MINNESOTA, NORTH CAROLINA and TEXAS are making sure that voters from this year’s midterm election don’t forget about the armed and masked mass deportation agents, brutal violence and brazen lawlessness that have plagued American communities since Donald Trump’s return to power last year.
In TEXAS, bilingual billboards read “END THE VIOLENCE” and bear an image of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Jr. and Ronaldo Salgado, the U.S. citizen sons of the small business owner who was shot and killed by ICE while on his way to work this past July. In the billboard photos, the two grieving men hold a portrait of their late father, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Other community members who have lost their lives as a result of this mass deportation agenda include U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez, whose March 2025 shooting was kept hidden from the public for nearly a year.
“Texas families know what this deportation machine looks like because they’ve seen it up close,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice. “Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was on his way to work and Ruben Ray Martinez was celebrating his birthday when ICE agents took their lives. Trump and his enablers in Congress built this machine and aimed it at communities like the Rio Grande Valley.”
“These billboards make sure no one forgets the cruelty, the lawlessness, and the chaos it has brought to Texas,” Cárdenas continued. “It has gone too far, and it has to stop.”
In NORTH CAROLINA, billboards reading “END THE VIOLENCE” point to Border Patrol’s Nov. 2025 targeting of the Charlotte area. This invasion – led by noted tear gas-flinger and disgraced Border Patrol official Greg Bovino – descended on this community of nearly one million residents to harass U.S. citizens, cause parishioners to flee church grounds in terror and force local businesses to shutter just days before the Thanksgiving holiday. Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery, estimated that he lost up to $64,000 in business due to the raids.
“It has been a very tough year. You know, worse than the 2008 recession, worse than COVID,” he said. “We haven’t been able to get back on track.”
In IOWA, billboards show the violent arrest of a grocery store worker as horrified shoppers demanded the plainclothes agents identify themselves. Others targeted in these raids also include Jorge, a Des Moines high school student who was abducted and deported after what was supposed to be a routine check-in. The 18-year-old’s guardian “was not able to speak with him for four days following his detainment, and then did not hear from him until Oct. 12, when he had been deported,” the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported at the time.
14-year-old Abigail Lopez, another student in the Des Moines area, struggles with the ongoing trauma of her dad’s deportation, Iowa Public Radio reports. “Abigail has missed four days of school due to the stress of her father’s detention and later deportation to Mexico.”
“She is one of more than 200,000 children, including at least 145,000 U.S. citizen children, who have had a parent detained by immigration authorities since the second Trump administration began, according to estimates from the nonpartisan think tank Brookings Institution,” the report continued. “Exposure to immigration enforcement in childhood has been found to lead to long-term anxiety, PTSD and depression in adolescence and young adulthood,” The Hechinger Report said earlier this year.
No matter citizenship status, age or region, American communities from coast to coast have become fair game under this bloody, chaotic and lawless $240 billion mass deportation agenda.
HOLD POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE, VOTE TO STOP THE DEPORTATION VIOLENCE
Americans have seen enough, and voters, especially Latino Americans, are rejecting this abuse of power. Two-thirds of Latino voters say Trump’s deportation policies have gone too far, and 69% disapprove of his handling of immigration, according to a recent NBC News poll. In just under two weeks, these voters and voters in affected communities everywhere have a chance to hold the architects of this agenda accountable.
“For the past year and a half, Americans have watched armed and masked agents with no names and no accountability detain people in their streets, pull parents from their cars, and send children away from the only homes they’ve ever known,” Cárdenas said. “Trump and his enablers in Congress built this violent and cruel ICE deportation machine and aimed it at our communities.”
#ICYMI: Today, we launched billboards in five states – TX, NC, GA, MN, IA – showing what immigration enforcement has done to American communities at the hands of ICE – terror, lawlessness, violence.🗣️ Our message is clear: #EndMassDeportation NOW.➡️ Learn more: EndMassDeportation.org
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T20:45:14.463Z
“These billboards remind Americans what this administration would rather people forget: the cruelty, the lawlessness, and the chaos of a dangerous ICE machine that they’ve unleashed on families in every corner of this country,” Cárdenas continued. “It has gone too far, and it has to stop.”
