Inhumane, Dangerous Treatment Of Migrants Increases In Texas
Barbenheimer is the latest enemy of the right, trump continues to suck the oxygen out of everything, Republicans keep looking for the Holy Grail to arrest Hunter Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis is telling students that enslaved people didn’t have it that bad.
And drowned out in the noise of political absurdity is the ongoing cruelty meted out in Texas as part of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s demonic, measures to win votes and stop immigration by people who are largely running for the lives to flee murder in their homelands.
Texas officials have intensified efforts to deter migrants this spring after the Biden administration prepared to end Title 42, the policy that was used by trump to immediately turn away most asylum-seekers, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Officials feared the end to Title 42 would cause a surge in crossings but officials said that crossings actually dipped to the lowest point since February 2021, much to the disappointment of Republicans who try to tie the chronic, migrant issue to Biden and the Democrats.
Among the latest reports, migrant children are getting torn up by concertina wire placed in the Rio Grande River, others are being forced back into the river without water despite horrendous temperatures and migrants are drowning as they try to swim around thousands of buoys that are part of Abbott’s plan to win the cruelest governor award, just inching ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Armed guards and military vehicles patrol the shoreline as a repeating audio message plays over loudspeakers, warning migrants to stay in Mexico.
The concertina wire and buoys are relatively new measures and the Justice Department has warned Abbott that it is illegal to use such things to deter illegal migration. It seems that the governor is not moved by the federal government’s notification and the wire and buoys remain in place.
Unsurprisingly, concertina or razor wire was invented in the 1930s by a German, Horst Dannert. Concertina wire is especially dangerous because it has many sharp blades that can slice deep into flesh. Concertina wire is commonly seen on the high walls surrounding prisons or high security facilities. It is named after the musical instrument and its expanding and contracting bellows.
In a letter to President Biden, congressional Democrats expressed “profound alarm” at the injuries resulting from the wire, including at least one pregnant woman who became entangled in the 60 miles of wire installed by Texas forces in recent months.
Democrats in the Texas Senate wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding an investigation into the latest anti-migrant actions. They cited reports of a 19-year-old woman caught in the razor wire while experiencing a miscarriage; Texas National Guard soldiers pushing an exhausted 4-year-old girl back into the river; migrants drowning as they tried to get around the buoys, and others being cut by razor wire wrapped around buoys.
The concertina wire has been erected along the Rio Grande shoreline. A string of four-feet high, orange buoys has been placed to create a barrier to migrants attempting to cross the river into the U.S. The first segment of the barrier will stretch for 1,000 feet and is expected to cost $1 million. It is being installed in Eagle Pass, a hot spot for illegal crossings, located on the Rio Grande border with the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. Abbott has promised to lay down miles of wire and buoys.
The Rio Grande River, and particularly the area of Eagle Pass, is a dangerous and sometimes lethal place. Last September, 13 migrants drowned there. Earlier in 2022, 12 bodies were recovered from the river in a single day. On another occasion, authorities recovered the bodies of a Guatemalan woman and her infant daughter.
Eagle Pass has become a popular stop for Republican politicians to claim that Biden’s policies have caused illegal immigration to rise. Among those who have taken advantage of the situation have been DeSantis, and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.
The buoys are made by Cochrane Global, based in Dubai, Washington, D.C. and New York City. The company website says the buoys are “the world’s most advance maritime security barrier.” The “smooth buoys” are being used, rather than more dangerous, “spike buoys” as an “ideal countermeasure against human intrusion, deterring people from attempting a crossing that would ordinarily prove to be perilous and in many cases, fatal,” the website says.
Abbott installed the concertina wire and the buoys without consulting with the federal government and federal authorities told Abbott they may seek a court order requiring the removal of the barriers.
“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” says a letter from the Justice Department.
Mexico also has condemned the plan for its “inhumane” treatment of migrants. Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Barcena said the razor wire and floating buoys violate treaties signed in 1944 and 1970 that govern the shared waters of the U.S. and Mexico.
The latest anti-immigration measures are part a plan known as “Operation Lone Star” which Abbott began after Biden took office and the president stopped construction of trump’s wrongheaded, border wall and began to end many of trump’s harsh immigration policies.
The Texas Legislature has allocated $5.3 billion for Operation Lone Star over the next two years, up from $4.6 billion from the previous cycle.
As of November 2022, Operation Lone Star is the most expensive operation in Texas military history, totaling $4 billion, and the largest deployment of forces since the Civil War. The operation has deployed more than 20,000 military and law enforcement personnel.
In a continuing race to the bottom, last year DeSantis tried to upstage Abbott when he flew 50 immigrants, most of them Venezuelan, without notice, from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. DeSantis said the flights were meant to highlight the crisis at the southern border, while Democrats and immigration activists said they made political pawns of vulnerable people.
Migrants who accepted the flight to Massachusetts were falsely promised that there were jobs on Martha’s Vineyard and people there to help them. The migrants each received a red folder containing a map of the United States, with an arrow stretching from Texas to Massachusetts. Another map in the shape of Martha’s Vineyard had a dot for the airport and one for the community services center.
Also in the folder was a brochure, apparently fake, titled “Refugee Migrant Benefits,” in English and Spanish. The cover proclaimed, “Massachusetts Welcomes You,” and featured a “state” flag that was not in fact the state flag. Listed on the back were the names and numbers of a church, a synagogue and a nonprofit on Martha’s Vineyard.
The pamphlet, reviewed by The N.Y. Times, also promised “up to eight months of cash assistance” for “income-eligible” refugees in Massachusetts, apparently mimicking benefits offered to refugees who arrive in the United States through the country’s official resettlement program, which the Venezuelans were not part of.
The non-profit, Lawyers for Civil Rights, is representing 30 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard. On Sept. 17, 2022, the group wrote Rachael S. Rollins, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, that the migrants were “induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretenses.”
The group wrote that individuals, working in concert with the Florida Governor, “made numerous false promises to our clients, including of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance, in order to induce them to travel.”
“It was only when the flight was in mid-air that they were informed they would be flown to Martha’s Vineyard, rather than to Boston as many had been told. Once the planes landed, those who had induced our clients to travel under these false pretenses disappeared, leaving our clients to learn that the offers of assistance had all been a ruse to exploit them for political purposes,” the group wrote.
Other states last year also began busing and flying migrants from the Southwest border to cities perceived as sanctuaries for immigrants, including Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Some were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala. Harris’s Naval Observatory home. More than 22,000 migrants have been sent by Texas on these journeys since April 2022.
The low point of the trump administration’s anti-migrant policy was the so-called family separation policy where federal border agents were ordered to wrench traumatized children from their parents’ arms, while the parents were sent back to their home countries.
As he campaigns to get back to the White House, Trump is calling for even more draconian measures, including the death penalty for human traffickers and revival of Title 42. Trump also has advocated the death penalty for drug traffickers.
If he is re-elected, trump’s policies likely include completion of his infamous wall at the southern border, a return to family separation, mass deportation, increased use of force against migrants, limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing “sanctuary cities,” expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas.
Stephen Miller, a top White House policy adviser during the Trump administration, said he had a “locked drawer of executive orders” on immigration that were intended for a “shock and awe blitz” if Trump is reelected.
Trump said he will use U.S. armed forces to stop migration.
“I’m going to take it right out of the military because they’re invading our country,” he declared at a conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year.
Trump vowed to deploy armed forces to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history!”
Trump’s latest comments came after he hosted a screening of the film “Sound of Freedom” at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J. He promoted the film and encouraged others to see the movie, which claims to chronicle former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard’s efforts to rescue trafficked children.
The film has been wildly profitable and is now the highest-grossing independent release since theaters reopened in 2021. The film’s producer, Eduardo Verástegui, is the founder of the right wing, CPAC Mexico. Trump nominated Verástegui to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Verástegui signed the Madrid Charter, a document drafted by the far-right Spanish party Vox that describes left-wing groups as enemies of Ibero-America involved in a “criminal project” that are “under the umbrella of the Cuban regime.”
Jim Caviezel, the star of the film, has been known to endorse aspects of the far right, QAnon conspiracy, while critics have questioned the validity of many parts of the film.