House Democrats from Texas went after Gov. Greg Abbott ® on Sunday over a standoff at the U.S.-Mexico border between state and federal law enforcement, accusing him of inciting potential violence and making border safety a purely political issue.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) described Abbott’s border security program as a “disaster” and part of the “most virulent anti-immigrant sentiment in a generation.”
The governor appeared to ignore a Supreme Court order last month that allowed federal Border Patrol to remove barriers erected by state law enforcement. Abbott shrugged off the order, claiming that state law “supersedes” federal.
Dozens of GOP governors have backed Abbott in the fight, with some pledging material assistance, including National Guard troops.
I’m not really sure about the whole thing honestly, but I’ve not heard any mention about a wall being removed. What I have heard is that there’s a bunch of razor wire in a river on the border that was installed by the state. A number of people have been caught in the razor wire and drowned trying to cross the border, and their corpses are still there because they’re tangled in the razor wire. The only actual dispute I’ve heard is that some federal agents wanted to remove the razor wire from the river and retrieve the corpses but state agents were blocking them from doing so.
Ok, here’s a source for that. Weird that so few articles are mentioning the specifics.
usatoday source
This is starting to make a whole lot more sense.
I can see how those buoys can actually be effective. But I wonder how expensive it would be to setup full coverage.
Also putting these on a river that serves as an international border without federal approval is some nonsense. It’s like, what’s next? Texas starts to unilaterally make trade agreements with mexico because they’re the ones at the border?
I’m not a big fan of the pulling on the hearstrings. These people are dying with or without the border fences. And presumably if they’re willing to take these risks, it’s because the situation where they come from is even worse. You can’t just simply point at the location where they end up dying and say that’s where all the evil is. If they survive the river, they can die in the desert, if they survive the desert, they can die as a vagrant. If they get picked up, they can get sent back to mexico right back where they were in at least as much danger. If they get accepted as a refugee then they become the government’s responsibility, which is not a solution that scales to the number of people that need it. That’s before you even ask the question of whether the US government should accept responsibility (which I think it should, I suspect that the US’s mismanaged war on drug is in large part to blame for the unrest in Mexico).
But the whole thing gets even more complicated because Mexican cartels are responsible for these illegal border crossing attempts. And they’re likely lying to the immigrants about the benefits of crossing illegally. People may be risking their lives not knowing that what they’re doing could kill them and that what they get in the end may not even be that much better than where they come from.
What you don’t want is a situation where people are incentivized to risk their lives in illegal boarder crossings so that they can skip the line to obtain refugee status, taking spots away from people doing it the legal and safe way. That increases the overall misery and death. And if putting evil buoys that stink of death is going to get the job done, then it might be worth it.
Except it’s not going to get the job done. And it’s on an international river. And it’s terrible optics. And they’re illegal.
Just wanted to chime in that you are the only other person I’ve seen mention this. It’s like everyone just assumes people try and cross the border for the hell of it, but despite the barriers to doing so it ends up still being the best option for these people. Maybe we should look at fixing the root of the problem, as opposed to treating people like trash.