When the Waters Rose, So Did Mexico. Where Is Our Humanity? by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

When the Waters Rose, So Did Mexico. Where Is Our Humanity?

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 7, 2025

Source: https://www.facebook.com/protcivilacuna

As floodwaters swallowed parts of the Texas Hill Country over the Fourth of July weekend—ripping through tents, cabins, and homes with terrifying force—a rare and radiant kind of help arrived from across the border.

Nine brave volunteer firefighters from Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, along with four members of Fundación 911 México, answered the call for help—not with questions, conditions, or fanfare, but with quiet courage and unflinching resolve. Early Sunday morning, they crossed into Texas and headed straight for Kerrville, where more than 80 people have already been confirmed dead and dozens remain missing in one of the deadliest floods in recent U.S. history.

They didn’t come for headlines. They came for humanity.

Search and rescue response in Texas has become an international effort as volunteer firefighters from Mexico are lending a hand to their neighbors to the north.(Dirección de Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña, Coahuila. News Source: Worley, 2025)

Arriving with boats, gear, and rigorous training—but most of all, heart—this elite Mexican rescue team worked alongside Texans in scenes of devastation that blurred flags and erased borders.

They searched with Texas volunteers and grieving families, knowing full well the risks. And they did so in a country where anti-Mexican vitriol has become policy, where border walls and razor wire have replaced bridges of solidarity, and where leaders like Donald Trump and Greg Abbott use cruelty toward immigrants not only as a political strategy but as spectacle and sport.

It is impossible to miss the moral contrast.

While Trump mocks migrants—once suggesting we electrify the border wall and fill trenches with alligators (Valenzuela, 2025)—Mexican first responders are here saving lives in the treacherous Guadalupe River.

Trump’s cruelty toward migrants—like the grotesque ‘Alligator Alcatraz’—didn’t begin last month, but dates back to his prior presidency:

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him. (Shear & Hirschfeld, 2019).

While Trump dreams of alligator-filled moats—now a grotesque reality in the Florida Everglades (Valenzuela, 2025)—Mexican rescuers are wading through floodwaters to save the victims of this unspeakable catastrophe. This isn’t merely a policy divide—it’s a gaping rupture in our values between nations.

Not long ago, Governor Greg Abbott made a chilling remark during a radio interview with host Dana Loesch:

“The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder” (García, 2024).

While Abbott criminalizes desperate asylum seekers and installs drowning traps in the weaponized and border-scarred Rio Grande, Mexico sends its bravest to help Texans recover the bodies of adults and children swept away by a different—yet kindred—river: the sorrowful and tragic Guadalupe. A river named for La Virgen de Guadalupe, who stands for love, mercy, and protection. One side chooses cruelty; the other, compassion.

Though these two rivers do not meet, they are bound by shared grief and the stories they carry: one polluted by politics, the other by tragedy. And in this moment, Mexico chooses compassion. Texas, through Abbott’s policies, chooses cruelty—even as we’re wrongfully told that Mexico is the enemy.

We’re told to fear the "invasion" of immigrants while witnessing a border-born miracle of selflessness, solidarity, and sorrowful grace.

Source: Protección Civil Acuña

Make no mistake: this isn’t the first time Mexico has come to our aid. After Hurricane Katrina, Mexican troops and aid workers traveled to Louisiana to help with recovery. After 9/11, Mexican officials offered forensic support to identify victims. When the pandemic struck, Mexican doctors crossed into El Paso to ease hospital shortages.

So, when will we stop pretending that compassion has a passport?

When will the likes of Trump and Abbott look into the eyes of these rescuers—heroes in every sense of the word—and reckon with the cruelty of their exclusionary policies, the machinery of fear they’ve built, and their shameful attempts to dehumanize the very people who, in our hour of need, showed up to save us?

This weekend, we saw the best of Mexico, no doubt.

Let us not forget the names of those who walked into our disaster with open arms (Protección Civil Acuña, 2025).

Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña:

Javier Alvarado Lumbreras

Cristopher Abraham Herrera

Roel Delgado Martínez

José Omar Llanas Hernández

Aldo Ortiz Rodríguez

Mario Alberto Linares

Guillermo Samuel Quiroz

Javier Isaac Alvarado

Jesús Eduardo Salas Ibarra

Fundación 911 México:

Ismael Aldaba Flores

Miguel Ángel González

Jesús Gómez Arizpe

Jorge Fuentes

Their bravery echoes a long tradition of Mexico showing up for the U.S. in our darkest moments—whether after Katrina, 9/11, or COVID-19. They also helped rebuild Georgia in the devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew.

Similarly, they arrived last Saturday in the early morning hours—not as invaders, but as lifelines. Not to take, but to give—of their time, their skill, and their courage. They came not as strangers, but as hermanos—brothers carrying grief in one hand, and justice, unspoken but evident, in the other.

In a world parched of empathy, with "scorched Earth" policies to match, these  are the waters that should rise. In a moment like this, may the words of the prophet Amos echo with urgency: "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). May we remember that justice does not flow from border walls, but from hands reaching across them.

To the leaders who build walls and stoke hate: let this moment be your mirror.  As for the rest of us, we must ask ourselves—not just today but every day—what kind of people we want to be. 

The waters rose. Mexico showed up. Now it’s our turn—to rise not just in gratitude, but in solidarity.

References

García, U. J. (2024, January 11). Abbott’s immigration rhetoric criticized again after interview response about shooting migrants. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/11/texas-border-migrants-greg-abbott-interview-shoot/ 

Protección Civil Acuña. (2025, July 6 at 6:11 AM). Water rescue team stands in flooding in USA [Facebook post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/protcivilacuna

Shear, M. D., & Davis, J. H. (2019, October 1). Shoot migrants’ legs, build alligator moat: Behind Trump’s ideas for border. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/politics/trump-border-wars.html

Valenzuela, A. (2025, July 2). Alligator Alcatraz: A monument to cruelty in the heart of the Everglades [Blog post]. Texas Ed Equity. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/07/alligator-alcatraz-monument-to-cruelty_2.html

Worley, D. (2025, July 7). Firefighters from Mexico join response efforts to catastrophic Texas floods. KBTX. https://www.kbtx.com/2025/07/07/firefighters-mexico-join-response-efforts-catastrophic-texas-floods/