Torres is Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan for "towers." Families took it from living near a tower or fortification, or from one of the many Iberian places named Torres. It is a place/topographic surname, not "son of Torre" in the usual -ez patronymic pattern.
Because towers were common landmarks, unrelated families could adopt the same label independently—much like English Hill. US records usually drop accents and keep Torres as the stable spelling across Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking lines. Families carried the name across the Atlantic without changing its core sense.