Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus criticised Texas governor Greg Abbott for deploying “cruel and inhumane” ways like razor-tipped buoys as a part of his controversial effort to lock down the US-Mexico border.
“Today was eye-opening,” Rep Sylvia Garcia of Texas wrote on X, previously referred to as Twitter, sharing a video of orange buoys used within the Rio Grande that are separated with blade saw-like barbed disks. “Seeing the barbaric, inhumane, and ungodly practices in my home state of Texas. This is beyond politics and crosses a line into human rights violations.”
“Everyone needs to see what I saw in Eagle Pass today,” mentioned Texas congressman Joaquin Castro in his personal dispatch from the border. “Clothing stuck on razor wire where families got trapped. Chainsaw devices in the middle of buoys. Land seized from US citizens. Operation Lone Star is barbaric — and Governor Abbott is making border communities collateral damage.”
The Texas governor has insisted that the buoys and razor wire he’s put in throughout the border between the state and Mexico will save lives by deterring migration.
However, as The Independent has reported, advocates and Texas troopers are warning the instruments are already placing individuals in danger.
In July, a Texas state border medic named Nicholas Wingate went public with allegations that the border obstacles had been already inflicting extreme accidents, and that he and his fellow troopers had been ordered, as a part of the governor’s Operation Lone Star, to push exhausted migrants again into the river and refuse to supply them water. (The state denies this order existed.)
“I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane,” he informed his superiors, in messages shared with media retailers.
Last week, Mexican officers knowledgeable the state of Texas that two our bodies had been discovered within the Rio Grande: one ensnared in Governor Greg Abbott’s controversial floating border wall, and one other in a close-by space.
Critics allege the border build-up trigger these deaths, although the reason for demise for the 2 individuals discovered hasn’t been decided but.
Guardsmen watch as migrants attempt to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US close to Eagle Pass, Texas, in July
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Despite years of border safety installations and billions invested throughout a number of state and federal administrations, migration continues to extend, hitting a document in December.
“It’s been proven time after time that these so-called prevention through deterrence strategies don’t work,” Fernando García of the Border Network for Human Rights informed The Independent final month. “They have not stopped immigration flows, but what they have done is they have put immigrants at risk.”
“It’s very likely that with [the floating buoy wall] they are looking for more remote and isolated places to come across so that whenever they are in danger by heat exhaustion, by drowning, they will not have anybody to help them,” he added, saying he worries it could possibly be a document yr for migrant deaths within the Rio Grande.
Members of Congress and human rights activists aren’t the one ones taking difficulty with the border obstacles.
Last month, a neighborhood kayak information in Eagle Pass named Jessie Fuentes sued the state, arguing it doesn’t have authority to erect a floating border barrier within the Rio Grande.
“You’ve taken a beautiful waterway and you’ve converted it into a war zone,” he informedThe Independent.
The Department of Justice has additionally sued the state, arguing it violated federal waterways legal guidelines.
Texas has insisted it has authorized authority to hold out such measures, a few of which it argues are allowed beneath a controversial studying of the US Constitution granting states conflict powers when theyr’e beneath invasion.
Legal specialists informed The Independent this can be a mistaken studying of the clause, which was supposed to cowl invasion by navy forces, not common immigration by civilians.
“The theory that Abbott is relying on here is that the influx of undocumented individuals is an actual invasion. That also doesn’t pass muster,” Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel on the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program, informed The Independent.