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Gov. Greg Abbott, who made a hard-line immigration stance part of his 2022 reelection campaign, recently ordered buoys covered with razor wire placed in the Rio Grande River.
Texas Democrats are demanding a federal investigation into Gov. Greg Abbott's border crackdown after the Houston Chronicle reported that state troopers had been ordered to push migrants, including pregnant women, back into the Rio Grande River.
DPS officers also were told not to provide water to migrants despite the ongoing heat wave, according to the Chronicle, which based its reporting on an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper.
Since the report, Democratic lawmakers including Congressman Joaquin Castro and State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, both of whom represent San Antonio, have demanded the Biden administration launch a federal investigation into the allegations. Others, including former gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke, expressed their disgust with the alleged inhumane treatment of migrants.
"Abbott you are a thug. A murderer. A ghoul," O'Rourke wrote in a Monday night Tweet. In another tweet, the former El Paso congressman called on President Joe Biden to halt Abbott, a Republican, from "deploying razor wire and medieval drowning devices designed to ensnare and mutilate."
There is one person who has the power to stop Abbott.⁰⁰Stop him from deploying razor wire & medieval drowning devices designed to ensnare & mutilate. Stop every illegal thing he’s doing on the border that ends up killing human beings.
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) July 18, 2023
⁰Mr. President, we need you to act.
Last month, Abbott instructed DPS agents to deploy buoys covered with razor wire into the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass as part of the his border security operation, Operation Lone Star. Abbott made a hardline immigration stance a key part of his 2022 reelection campaign, and Texas has so far spent at least $4.4 billion on Operation Lone Star.
Soon after the buoys and razor wire were dispatched, a DPS officer complained in an email to a superior that migrants were becoming ensnared in the wire and being pushed back into the river by officers, the Chronicle reports.
"I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane," the officer wrote.
In the email, the DPS officer wrote that a pregnant woman who was having a miscarriage was found last month caught in the razor wire. A four-year-old girl also passed out from heat exhaustion after getting through the wire, only to be pushed back into the Rio Grande by Texas National Guard soldiers, according to the Chronicle's reporting.
The officer also expressed concerns that the buoys and razor wire had increased the risk of drownings by setting up "traps" in parts of the river with high water and poor visibility.
"Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well," the emails obtained by the Houston Chronicle said.
DPS spokesperson Travis Considine told the Chronicle there's no policy against giving migrants water.
Even so, Gutierrez and Castro are demanding a federal investigation into the report.
"What is happening at our southern border is not security in any sense of the word," Gutierrez, who recently announced a 2024 run against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, said in a statement. "This is cruelty inflicted by a governor that has failed to keep Texans safe. I am calling for a swift investigation into this matter by the U.S. Department of Justice and for the Federal authorities to shut down Abbott's unconstitutional rogue operation."
Similarly, Castro also called for an investigation in a Monday evening tweet, saying that he had asked the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to intervene and "remove the death traps Abbott has installed for the sake of human rights."I raised the issue of @GovAbbott's barbarity at a dinner tonight with @SecBlinken.
— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) July 18, 2023
I read him the title and first paragraph of the @ExpressNews article and urged the Administration to intervene — and to remove the death traps Abbott has installed for the sake of human rights.
In a statement emailed to the Current, Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris defended the governor's decision to use "every tool and strategy" to keep out undocumented immigrants.
"The absence of razor wire and other deterrence strategies encourages migrants to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry, while making the job of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers more dangerous and difficult," he added.
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