The Houston Chronicle has an absolutely stunning report charging Texas state troopers with carrying out acts intended to kill or injure asylum-seekers. It comes after the Texas Department of Public Safety strung miles of razor wire along the shores of the Rio Grande and, even more controversially, floated a line of deadly razor wire-wrapped barrels in the river itself, all meant to "deter" asylum-seekers from attempting the swim.
It was self-evident that the wire would maim or kill some of the people who attempted the crossing. In addition, the Chronicle has obtained an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper to his superior complaining that officers manning the traps in the border town of Eagle Pass "have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande."
According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.
The line of buoys anchored in the river is clearly intended as a deadly trap; there's no counterargument. The barrels themselves are wrapped loosely in razor wire, likely to cause severe injuries. Asylum-seekers who attempt to swim under the buoys will find themselves blocked and potentially trapped by "webbing going down into the water" that’s anchored to the riverbed.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, and other state officials continue to flagrantly lie about the purpose of the barriers, even as the Chronicle reports internal emails from McCraw acknowledging increased injuries to asylum-seekers caused by the new deployments. McGraw claims the wire is meant "to deter smuggling" and "not to injure migrants."
But the design, which places obstacles not on dry land but in the river and on the riverbanks, is clearly one that will maximize injury and death. Asylum-seekers who travel the length of Central America and then Mexico in hopes of finding refuge are still spurred to risk that one last danger, with asylum now only a few dozen yards away. The decision by Texas officials to put razor-wrapped buoys and "webbing" in the deepest part of the river is self-evidently designed to snag and drown those still desperate enough to risk crossing it.
But it's the shoreline wire that even more clearly disproves Texas officials' claims that the wire targets "smugglers," not asylum-seekers. A blockade meant to deter "smuggling" could be deployed anywhere on the U.S. side of the river; it would make no difference whether it was at the river's edge or a dozen yards inland or more. The bulldozed no-mans-land of a "border wall" remains the law enforcement-preferred solution for intercepting smugglers, if intercepting smugglers is a dire enough reason to require one.
Putting a haphazard line of razor wire at the very edge of the water itself, a far more dangerous place to encounter it, seems plainly aimed at preventing asylum-seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, an act that would give them inherent federal and international rights. The goal of a Texas National Guard soldier who "pushed" a 4-year-old girl back through the wire into the river was not to deter a smuggler, but to prevent a 4-year-old from gaining refugee protections. Even if it causes her to pass out from heat exhaustion. Even if it causes her even worse injuries.
That the newest Republican plan to block asylum-seekers is "inhumane" is beyond dispute. With a design clearly aimed more at injuring desperate people than preventing "smuggling," it again crosses the line into being almost glibly malevolent.
Texas is rapidly becoming a failed state, and it's not because desperate asylum-seekers are sometimes making it across its militarized border. It's because the state’s increasingly fascist government now seems to have absolute contempt for human rights, for the lives of its own citizens, and others.
Abbott's plan to snag and drown asylum-seekers before they can sully his precious Republican state with their presence has definitely launched him back into the lead as the most odious and performatively evil of state leaders. Texas officials are now eagerly embracing murder, which might be one of the few ways they could ever have topped their support for an attempted coup.
RELATED STORIES:
The feds need to look into possible human rights abuses and trafficking by Govs. Abbott and DeSantis
'Just inhumane': Watch Morning Joe's scathing rebuke of Texas governor
Texas Republicans are being performatively evil again
