The Hate State of Texas

(I wish to stop writing about the border but right now it deserves everyone’s attention. This midweek missive will offer another update on a situation that daily grows more desperate on Texas-Mexico frontera. I wrote in the past few weeks about the dangers being created by the governor of Texas, who appears to place no value on the lives of immigrants, and in a subsequent post I indicated his river buoys might be violating international treaties with Mexico. That analysis also looked at the concertina wire and how it is making it impossible for border patrol agents to perform their duties under federal law.

Now comes a story from the Houston Chronicle that verifies my earlier claims that the governor is likely pleased by deaths at the border because they will reduce efforts of immigrants trying to reach America through the use of fear. The newspaper was given an email from a soldier that claimed troops were being ordered to push migrants back into the river, and not give them water, even in the most extreme heat conditions. The trooper, unidentified, described the actions being taken as “inhumane.” And that’s not the end of it for people dreaming that better things will happen for them when they get into Texas. Often, they find their situation can become worse than it was on the south side of the Rio Grande. - JM)

The lead on reporter Benjamin Wermund’s story in the Houston Chronicle ought to enrage anyone with even the slightest conscience or sense of humanity.

“Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as ‘inhumane.’”

I suppose this is the last step before the governor decides to declare undocumented immigration as an invasion and issues orders to shoot on sight. I have argued that he is not the least concerned about the loss of immigrant life because each death sends a message back south that you, too, might die trying to get into Texas. There are certain to be more gun mishaps, also, and an innocent person will be gravely wounded or die because when there is a concentration of weaponry and an adversary, armed or unarmed, guns go off.

Wermund’s story is stunning. Officers under orders from the “pro-life” governor of Texas were described as telling National Guard soldiers to push a four-year-old girl back into the river after she had recovered from passing out because of heat exhaustion while trying to get through the curls of razor wire. The email also described a pregnant 19-year-old woman, doubled over in pain and caught in the wire, having a miscarriage, and a teenaged boy who broke a leg trying to navigate his way around the wire in the water and ended up being carried by his father. There have been several cases of serious lacerations, and four drownings in recent weeks. One child simply disappeared into the water from its mother’s arms, and has not been found.

There are two actions that can begin immediately to end Abbott’s brutality and violations of international law. The first would be for the president to activate units of the National Guard from outside of Texas and have them dispatched to the border with the resources and authority to remove the concertina wire, shipping crates, and the floating river barrier being installed. Mexico has already filed a complaint regarding the impact the river barrier will have on changing the river course while also violating international treaties about border infrastructure cooperation and water. The president’s federal authority to remove any and all barriers likely derives from the fact that Abbott’s extreme measures are interfering with Customs and Border Patrol agents performing their duties. Abbott is also contravening U.S. federal law by ordering troops to keep asylum seekers in the river so they are unable to make their legal claims of political prosecution, which would give them safe harbor in the states.

The second step that needs to be taken by the White House is to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launch a human rights investigation into what is transpiring on the border under the authority of Greg Abbott. ICE is empowered through the Department of Justice (DoJ) to examine issues of human rights using its Criminal Division, Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP). Evidence abounds on the border that Texas government is showing zero respect for human rights. The email obtained by Wermund and Hearst Newspapers indicated there were “traps” in the river and that flotation balls were wrapped in razor wire just below the water’s surface, a device certain to injure and kill, indiscriminately. Mexico, which has already sent a diplomatic letter to Washington to complain about the border barrier, ought to send a follow-up communique’ demanding DoJ and ICE look into human rights violations in the treatment of its citizens at the border.

The unidentified trooper, who sent the email, found it impossible to believe he and his colleagues had been ordered not to provide water to people in the 100 degree plus heat, many of whom were on the verge of passing out.

“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”

In a binational campaign to document human rights abuses of immigrants, the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) just released data showing what it described as “systemic pattern” of abuse and a lack of accountability by law enforcement agencies interacting with migrants. The survey questioned immigrants and members of communities along the border and reported 177 alleged cases of abuse in 2022 and thus far in 2023. Documentation was acquired of 52 cases of abuse by state, federal, and local law enforcement working between Southern New Mexico, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley.

The Border Report quoted Fernando Garcia, BNHR executive director, who said, “It’s a massive violation of civil and human rights. What we’re seeing is that our border communities and migrants are being subjected to a number of programs, local, state and federal, that are impacting their lives, their well being, and civil rights. This is very worrisome, the fact that we have state officers, state police now enforcing immigration laws as a part of a political game that now has very clear and dangerous consequences.”

The data from BNHR is another indication that Texas is meddling in federal immigration enforcement without authority while using Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. DPS troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers have not been provided adequate training, procedures, and protocols to minimize harm to migrants and local communities.

There are also long odds against finding great comfort on this side of the river, if migrants get into Texas. Often, work is scarce and many families end up in colonias, unregulated developments along the border. Generally, these are sections of land, privately held, which are broken up and sold on payment plans to frequently disadvantaged buyers. They tend to be outside of municipal jurisdictions and utilities, and as a consequence are usually without running water, paved roads, or even electricity. State legislators have made only meager attempts to regulate these developments. They are frequently the future that awaits undocumented immigrants. The first time I visited a colonia in the seventies, homes looked more like childhood camps of corrugated tin, cardboard and wire. Sewage was flowing in shallow ditches and people were cooking over open fires not far from the Rio Grande.

In just Hidalgo County, one of the four that comprise the Rio Grande Valley, there are estimated to be 900 colonias where people are living Third World lives in the wealthiest nation on the planet. During the Futuro RGV forum this week in McAllen, Manny Vela, vice president and chief operating officer of Texas A&M McAllen, urged everyone in the room to visit a colonia to understand the poverty and needs of people trying to escape border oppression.

“If you’ve not visited a colonia in your lifetime,” Vela said, “Or within the last several years I would urge you to please do so because the reality is our fellow Texans in 2023 are living in extreme poverty. Many don’t have clean running water, electricity, plumbing. The things we take for granted when we get home after work and open our fridge to get a cold drink or whatever are things that are an incredible luxury for these folks.”

Vela’s comments were reported by the Rio Grande Guardian as part of its coverage of the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force. Texas A&M has had a colonias program since 1991, but without a dedication of state resources, and an infusion of cash, changing those environments and economic circumstances happens slowly. The governor of Texas probably has never even been told of colonias. We know he has almost certainly never made an effort to learn about or visit them and understand the struggles of their residents. There are, undoubtedly, thousands of colonias from El Paso to Brownsville, and instead of spending tax dollars and state resources on helping, Greg Abbott’s immoral approach to the border is to offer uniformed police and soldiers along with razor wire and deadly floating barriers that cost billions annually, and kill in the name of Texas taxpayers.

Imagine what else might be done with that money.