Earlier this week, The Houston Chronicle exposed a complaint from a state Department of Public Safety trooper charging his superiors with ordering officers to "push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande" if it looks like migrant families would otherwise make it through the razor wire that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state officials ordered be strung for miles along the riverbank.
That wouldn't be the only apparent crime being committed by state officials, troopers, and national guardsmen along the river. A new Chronicle story reports that the deadly river traps are being constructed on private lands, without the permission of landowners. Even more significantly, it looks like Texas officials are deploying the razor wire in an attempt to interfere with federal Border Patrol operations in the same area. State troopers are lining the river with razor-wire traps that block Border Patrol agents from accessing it or attempting migrant rescues themselves, and it looks like that was the state government’s plan all along.
The Chronicle's newest scoop comes from a private landowner in Eagle Pass who is now objecting to the state stringing razor wire on his land without his permission. The official Texas government response was that he could pound sand, with Department of Public Safety Regional Director Victor Escalon Jr. telling the landowner that the order to place the wire was coming "from the top."
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The reason state officials can seize private land to construct their deadly river traps? "In an interview Tuesday, Escalon said DPS has the authority to use private property without the owner's permission under a border-related disaster declaration signed by the governor in 2021."
Yep: Abbott and the party of private land rights simply declared that the "emergency" of their own racist cruelty allows them to seize whatever private land they want to.
The Republican landowner, Hugo Urbina, has threatened charges against the state for the theft of his land. Urbina initially agreed to the wire, reports the Chronicle, but rescinded his permission last year because migrants were being injured. Urbina wants assurances he won't be held legally responsible for injuries or deaths caused by the wire on his property, but the Department of Public Safety can't promise that. They may be the state’s razor-wire traps, with some of them strung "underwater" or now camouflaged by growing plants, but it's still his land. Of course he's going to be in legal peril if a migrant—or a federal Border Patrol agent—is severely injured or dies due to wire they may not have even seen.
The Chronicle's story is focused on this one pecan farmer's plight, but barely touches a part of the story that sounds far more intriguing. While the line of razor-wired buoys strung midriver and multiple lines of razor wire lining the U.S. side of the river are meant to be the Texas government's attempt to snag desperate migrants before they can officially request amnesty on U.S. soil, it sure sounds like the wire might also be an Abbott government attempt to interfere with federal Border Patrol agents now blocked from patrolling those same border sites.
And the newest lines of wire might be payback against this particular (Republican!) farmer for leasing out part of his land to federal agents.
The wire has escalated tensions between state and federal officials. Border Patrol officials warned in an internal document last month that agents were being blocked from accessing the river and reaching at-risk migrants. Abbott has also deployed massive buoys in the river to further deter migrants from crossing.
Urbina said agents have had to cut through the wire to access portions of his property they have been leasing from him for about six weeks. [DPS director Victor Escalon] said the makeshift Border Patrol station on Urbina’s property — which includes an air-conditioned trailer, tents for shade, portable toilets and drinkable water — has acted as a magnet for migrants.
“He asked me the other day, ‘Why my property?’ ” Escalon said. “You’re leasing to U.S. Border Patrol — they have tents, they have trailers and the migrants know … that this is the place to come across into the United States where you’ll be accepted and pushed through.”
From that little snippet, then, we know that Texas officials chose Urbina's property for river traps because Urbina had been hosting a makeshift processing center for migrants set up by the Border Patrol. Officials then strung wire across the leased site to prevent federal agents from getting to parts of it. The razor wire also prevents federal officials from rescuing migrants who have been injured by the river crossing.
And yes, the Texas DPS guy sounds quite eager to admit that the wire went up because Urbina was cooperating with the federal government instead of them.
It's not exactly surprising that Urbina would be willing to lease a spot of land out for a Border Patrol processing camp, but would absolutely not be willing to lend out his land so that Texas officials could string up potentially deadly traps that have been severely injuring migrants desperate enough to try to cross the Rio Grande. You would have to be an inhuman monster to support the latter, and you'd have to be stupid to think that you could allow hidden razor wire to be strung under and along the riverbank on your property and not be sued into oblivion if the wire succeeds in maiming or killing someone.
It's not just migrants who are in danger, either. If the wire is blocking Border Patrol rescue attempts (after Texas troopers and national guardsmen sit nearby, willing only to "push" families back through the wire), then it's only a matter of time before federal agents themselves get trapped during an attempt to apprehend or rescue migrants.
So now we've got a situation where Texas officials are stringing up razor wire in an attempt to obstruct the Border Patrol from their own processing sites, endangering federal officials because ... why? Is it intended as a threat? Is it meant to pose just as much danger to would-be rescuers as to migrants?
It's already clear that Texas officials are willing to resort to murder rather than abide asylum-seekers setting foot on Texas soil, but the first time a U.S. Customs or Border Patrol agent gets caught on this wire, Texas is going to have a whole different set of problems to worry about. Federal officials might just decide to take a line of bulldozers through Greg Abbott's whole little murder scheme if Abbott's little stunt injures one of them.
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