The Missing Voice in the Border Wall Debate: If the Rio Grande Could Speak, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 29, 2026

The Missing Voice in the Border Wall Debate: If the Rio Grande Could Speak

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.  

April 29, 2026

At first glance, this article published in The Big Bend Sentinel appears to offer a compelling account of grassroots mobilization, documenting how Texans gathered in Austin to protest the proposed border wall and defend places like Big Bend National Park. Yet, upon closer examination, the piece reveals a far more troubling limitation. It foregrounds human sentiment—memory, attachment, identity—while failing to meaningfully engage the land, the river, and the more-than-human world as subjects of concern in their own right. In doing so, it ultimately diminishes the gravity of what is at stake.

The article’s most significant shortcoming is its deeply anthropocentric framing. By this, I mean that the Big Bend region and the Rio Grande are rendered primarily as sites of human experience—places to visit, enjoy, and remember. Protesters’ concerns that the wall would “ruin the aesthetic” or restrict access are not insignificant; however, they remain confined within a human-centered epistemology, or way of knowing, that obscures a more fundamental question: 

What obligations do we have to the land itself? What claims might the river assert, were it recognized as more than a resource? What of the animals whose lives and migratory pathways would be irreparably disrupted?

Here, the writings of Anishinaabe scholar John Borrows (2010, 2019) offers a critical intervention. He argues that law is not merely a system of codified rules but is constituted through relationships—among humans, and crucially, between humans and the natural world. Within many Indigenous legal traditions, land, water, and non-human beings are not objects external to law; they are integral to its formation and meaning. Law, in this sense, is relational and place-based, emerging from longstanding practices of reciprocity and responsibility.

The article gestures briefly toward the more-than-human world in its description of protestors holding images of bears, mountain lions, deer, and other wildlife. Yet this moment is not developed. It is treated as symbolic rather than substantive. There is no sustained engagement with the ecological consequences of the proposed wall—its role in fragmenting habitats, interrupting migratory routes, and destabilizing a desert ecosystem that has evolved over millennia. 

From Borrows’ perspective, such omissions are not merely journalistic gaps; they reflect a deeper failure to recognize that environmental degradation constitutes a rupture in the very relationships that law ought to sustain (Borrows, 2019).

Moreover, the article’s emphasis on land ownership and government overreach reproduces a familiar, and ultimately limiting, legal grammar. By centering questions of private and state control, it reinscribes a property-based framework that has long underwritten environmental exploitation. Land is treated as something to be owned, accessed, or regulated, rather than as a living system to which humans are accountable. 

Borrows (2010) challenges precisely this orientation, demonstrating that many Indigenous legal orders prioritize responsibilities to land over rights of domination—a shift that carries profound implications for how we understand governance, justice, and sustainability.

This brings us to a broader jurisprudential impasse. Contemporary legal systems in the United States remain structurally oriented toward the protection of human interests and property relations. Within such a framework, entities like the Rio Grande lack standing; they cannot assert claims, seek redress, or demand protection. Emerging movements around the “rights of nature” seek to address this limitation by recognizing ecosystems as legal persons.

Importantly, Borrows’ work reminds us that such developments are not without precedent. They resonate with longstanding Indigenous legal traditions in which the natural world is understood as part of a broader legal community (Borrows, 2019). To recognize this is not to romanticize Indigenous knowledge, but to acknowledge its ongoing relevance in confronting contemporary ecological crises.

What the article ultimately reveals, then, is not simply a contested infrastructure project, but the inadequacy of prevailing legal and journalistic frameworks to apprehend it. Even in moments of resistance, discourse remains tethered to anthropocentric assumptions that obscure the full scope of environmental harm. Protest is articulated in terms of human loss—access, aesthetics, identity—rather than as a defense of the integrity of ecological systems themselves.

This should alarm us. The waiving of environmental protections, the opacity surrounding federal actions, and the potential for irreversible ecological damage demand not only critical reflection but public accountability. Silence from state leadership is untenable. Greg Abbott should not remain absent from a matter of such consequence to Texas lands, waters, and communities. At a minimum, Texans deserve transparency, deliberation, and a clear articulation of the state’s position.

Accordingly, this is a moment that calls for engagement. Residents should contact their elected representatives and insist upon the protection of the Big Bend region and the ecosystems it sustains. Information on legislative representation in Texas is available at https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home. Such actions, while modest, are essential in signaling that these issues carry public weight and demand a response.

If we are to move forward, however, more fundamental shifts are required. Protecting places like Big Bend necessitates rethinking the conceptual foundations of law, governance, and ethics. It requires moving beyond a framework in which land is valued primarily for human use, toward one in which land, water, and non-human life are recognized as participants in a shared legal and moral order.

Until such a shift occurs, accounts like this one will continue to gesture toward crisis without fully apprehending its depth. And the land, the river, and the countless beings who depend on them will remain, quite literally, outside the law.

References

Borrows, J. (2010). Canada’s Indigenous constitution. University of Toronto Press.

Borrows, J. (2019). Law’s indigenous ethics. University of Toronto Press.

Bubacz, K. (2026, April 5). Thousands of Texans protest border wall at state capitol. The Big Bend Sentinel. https://bigbendsentinel.com/2026/04/05/thousands-of-texans-protest-border-wall-at-state-capitol/

Thousands of Texans protest border wall at state Capitol

by Kate Bubacz April 5, 2026 | The Big Bend Sentinal

Texans from across the state join Big Bend residents for a rally against the border wall at the Capitol in Austin Saturday. Kate Bubacz photo.

Santa Elena Canyon was an alternate rally for river enthusiasts

Over 2,000 Texans stood on the steps of the state Capitol in Austin to sing, dance and protest the border wall that is planned in the Big Bend region. Undeterred by the rain and the Easter holiday weekend, attendees asserted their pride in the beloved, wild western corner of the state and their disbelief that both private and public land could be needlessly harmed by outside forces.

“I think being out here and being so angry helps define who is a true Texan,” said John Riddle, an Austin resident who visited the Big Bend National Park with friends last spring. The cause has united people from across the state and from both sides of the aisle. Everyone in the crowd seemed to have a story or a special memory about visiting the parks, and many seemed to feel personally offended that the Texas government would allow a federal administration to interfere with their private and state land.

“Nobody says we don’t need border security. A wall would keep us out of our treasured landscapes,” said retired park ranger Raymond Skiles, who led an enthusiastic chant of, “Don’t wall us out.”

The citizens who gathered were entirely volunteer led. Drew Heugel, a tech employee who lives in Austin, was one of the original event organizers. He was visiting the Big Bend region in February when news of the border wall broke. When he posted an idea of protest on his Facebook, he expected a few hundred likes. Instead, the idea took hold, attracting the support of thousands.

“I’m impressed with how people have rallied,” he said, under a tent that was bustling with volunteers handing out information to people walking up to the Capitol. Heugel worked in coordination with several local volunteer groups that have organized in the last two months, including Save Big Bend and the No Big Bend Wall groups.

Judah Hill, 14, came with his family from Houston specifically to attend the protest on Easter weekend. His family has a tradition of going to Big Bend to climb mountaintops. He held a sign that said, “The wall doesn’t match the aesthetic,” a playful Gen Z nod to how it would ruin the landscape.

The peaceful protest had a joyful but determined air as people gathered in the chilly afternoon to listen to two hours of speakers and singers, including Willie Nelson’s daughter Amy and Jimmy Dale Gilmour, along with an array of politicians from both parties.

Some 500 miles away at Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, about 150 people showed up by cars and boats to what they termed a “picnic” that featured protest signs and paintings along with speakers on bullhorns and chants against the wall.

Paddlers at Big Bend National Park’s Santa Elena canyon make their thoughts on a border wall 

known at a Saturday rally on the river. Jennifer Pittinger photo.

Protestors waded in the river, and dozens of boats lined the shore. “Really, we’re giving Mexico the Rio Grande and our border land,” read one sign. Another group of people stood in the river holding giant, painted cardboard cutouts of animals—beavers, bears, mountain lions, javelina and deer.

Back in Austin, Brandon Herrera and Katie Padilla Stout, staunch opponents vying for the region’s district congressional seat, both spoke at the Capitol against the wall. “We are here today to remind people you don’t mess with Texas,” said Stout, to cheers. “Nobody wants the wall in Big Bend,” said Herrera, minutes later.

In the six weeks since the wall was announced in Big Bend Sentinel, stiff opposition to it has organized and gained traction. A Customs and Border Patrol map originally showed a 517-mile steel wall planned, including the state and national park. The same map now shows smart technology planned through the parks and a steel structure through the remaining 175 miles upstream between Fort Quitman and Presidio. The map has become a key source of information, changing several times without warning or explanation, but Customs and Border Protection has never commented on the changes.

Protestors show off their signs against a Big Bend border wall at a protest at the Capitol in Austin Saturday. Kate Bubacz photo.

No details about what detection technology entails have been provided, sparking unease about disruption to a delicate ecosystem. Surveyors and contractors have started to show up in the region, keeping landowners and locals on edge that they stand to lose access to both their land, and the Rio Grande, the key water source for hundreds of miles. Twenty-eight environmental and archaeological protections for the region have been waived as over $6 billion in contracts have been awarded. Gov. Greg Abbott has maintained his near silence on the issue, which was noted by the signs in the crowd.

“Why isn’t Abbott speaking up for Texas lands? Come out and say something” said Mary Ann Robinson, who drove from Alpine, Texas, to attend the Capitol event.

Abbott’s office did release a statement to KXAN TV in Austin saying the governor talked to the “Border Patrol chief, who told him no physical walls would be erected in the national or state park.”

“Don’t Tread on Me” and “Come and Take It” flags were flown and worn with pride in Austin as calls about government overreach were met with cheers. Frustration has been mounting for what protesters see as a lack of clear answers on an issue that defies sense for the rugged landscape, impedes on private property and water rights and would cost a fortune to American taxpayers.

“We just want them to leave the whole damn thing alone,” said Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett. “As far as a wall through Big Bend, it seems like nature did that herself a few millennia ago.”

The fight against the wall is far from over. Local groups are seeking to address letters received by private landowners from the federal government seeking access to their land, the restoration of environmental protections and revocation of contracts that have been awarded.

Christina Hernandez, a Presidio resident and member of People of La Junta, told the Austin crowd: “People were living in relationship with this land before pyramids were built, and today we’re being told that this land can be cut through by people far away.”

The Human Toll of Greg Abbott’s War at the Border: A dispatch from Eagle Pass, Rolling Stone Magazine

Friends and all who care about the humanitarian crisis occurring along the U.S.-Mexico border. Do remember that people coming into our country have multiple and significant challenges in coming into a new culture, learning a language that's foreign to them, and dealing with trauma that emanates from the places they have left and oftentimes, from the journey itself.

Glad to see the Rolling Stone magazine giving this a lot of ink.  They care. We should all care about Abbott's lethal, macabre, and necropolitical ambitions. It's a feeling for many of us here in Texas of having gotten taken over by a foreign, cruel, and atrocious political power. One wonders how our state officials sleep well at night. Only a heart of metal can walk away from this.

-Angela Valenzuela

DEADLY AMBITION

The Human Toll of Greg Abbott’s War at the Border

A dispatch from Eagle Pass, where the Texas governor has amped up the cruelty toward migrants to boost his profile

National Guard stands behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Feb. 4, 2024 in Eagle Pass. RAQUEL NATALICCHIO/HOUSTON CHRONICLE/GETTY IMAGES

EAGLE PASS, Texas — The video is 13 seconds long. In the foreground is an orderly green lawn, lit and safe. In the background, there are the lights of Mexico, Coahuila state. In the middle is the river. It’s a void, darker than the night sky. 

Amid crickets, a woman’s voice echoes from the void, or maybe a child’s. Then a man’s. They’re crying out for help.

The lawn belongs to former state Rep. Poncho Nevárez (D), who represented Eagle Pass in the Texas Legislature for eight years. Some time back, the state of Texas installed rows of concertina wire, the razor-bladed coiled fencing first invented to control cattle and then to mangle soldiers in the First World War. The wire hadn’t stopped anyone from crossing. Sometimes migrants injured themselves trying to cross. Sometimes it trapped them in the river. It is more dangerous than it looks, especially if you’re hungry and tired, and even more so at night.

Nevárez does that night what anyone with a conscience would do: He tries to help. The wire means he can’t easily reach the river. With difficulty, he makes his way into the void, but he can’t locate the source echoing cries with his flashlight. He calls the Border Patrol, but he knows they don’t do water rescues. The cries die out. In the morning, there is no trace of them.

****

Trigger warning. This bone-chilling, macabre news account is like nothing I've read or listened to before. It only matches stories about the thousands of deaths of folks dying in the desert which is not a new phenomenon, but nevertheless a consistent horrific one.

Do go to the NBCNews.com website to listen, in these first responders' own words, what they are witnessing along the U.S.-Mexico border. We don't get much news like these in Texas about the very large numbers of bodies that are getting recovered along the Rio Grande River where people seeking a better life for themselves and families are experiencing.

How can we pride ourselves as a great country and allow for this to happen? We should not get numb to this. No, this is first and foremost a humanitarian crisis. These are people's loved ones, including tiny babies, who are drowning alongside their desperate mothers and fathers in their attempts to cross the river—even despite the inescapable visage of hideous barbed wire that screams the ugliness that our state and nation have become. 

Those doing the traumatizing work of recovering these bodies will similarly be suffering for years to come. Thank God for their humanitarian work, yet no one should ever have a job like this. We need to bring a stop to Gov. Abbott's necropolitics, his politics of death. 

These are crimes against humanity.

-Angela Valenzuela

First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande

After a record-breaking year of migrant crossings, Eagle Pass is applying for a grant to help pay for therapy and other mental health services.

Feb. 25, 2024, 8:00 AM CST

By Morgan Chesky and Alicia Victoria Lozano

EAGLE PASS, Texas — The crisis unfolding at the U.S.-Mexico border since last year has spilled over into the fire engines and ambulances of a small Texas town.

First responders in Eagle Pass say they are overwhelmed and increasingly traumatized by what they see: parents drowned or dying, their children barely holding onto life after attempting to cross the Rio Grande.

The emotional strain on firefighters and EMTs has grown so great that city officials have applied for a state grant that would bring in additional mental health resources for front-line workers.

“It’s an unprecedented crisis,” said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello. “It’s nothing close to what I experienced while I was on the line. It’s a whole different monster.”

Firefighters say the first calls for help usually blare through the three stations in Eagle Pass while crews are still sipping their morning coffee, bracing themselves for what the day will bring.

Parents with young children might be near drowning or trapped on islands somewhere between the United States and Mexico, surrounded by the fierce currents of the Rio Grande.

On some shifts, firefighters with the Eagle Pass Fire Department can spend three to five hours in the water, helping rescue migrants crossing the river or recovering their drowned bodies.

“It’s something we’ve never gone through,” said Eagle Pass native Marcos Kypuros, who has been a firefighter and EMT for two decades. “It’s been hard having to keep up with that on top of everything else we take care of.”

Eagle Pass has become ground zero in recent months for an unrelenting border crisis that is equal parts political and humanitarian.

With hundreds of thousands of people attempting to cross the border illegally each year near Eagle Pass, city emergency personnel have increasingly been called upon to perform difficult and often dangerous rescues or to retrieve dead bodies, they said. They do this while juggling other emergencies in the city of 28,000 and throughout sparsely populated Maverick County.

“They see decomposing bodies, they see children that have drowned. Babies 2-months-old, with their eyes half-open, their mouths full of mud,” Mello said. “I know that when I signed up, they told me that I would see all of that, but not in the number that these guys are seeing now.”

Call volumes to the fire department surged last summer after Title 42, which set limits on asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States, was lifted. On a typical day, the department might receive 30 calls, but the number has doubled in recent months, Mello said.

The added strain prompted one of his firefighters, who was still working through the required probationary period, to turn in his gear and switch careers entirely, he added.

After a record-breaking number of illegal crossings in December, federal authorities say the figure dropped by half in January. The most significant decrease was in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass.

But the steady rise in crossings last year has taken a toll on first responders who did not sign up for this kind of work, Kypuros said.

“Those times where we recover four or five, six, up to seven bodies a day — it was just rough,” he said.

As the number of calls for emergencies on the border grew last fall, so did the number of sick days firefighters requested, according to the fire chief.

“I try and leave all this at work, not take it home with me, but it’s so hard,” Kypuros said. “Sometimes it’s hard to cope.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It was not immediately clear when the funds the city applied for would be awarded.

After the record-breaking number of attempted border crossings last year, Abbott ramped up the state’s immigration enforcement efforts. Last week, he announced the deployment of 1,800 members of the Texas National Guard to Eagle Pass in an effort to curb illegal crossings.

Abbott, a Republican, installed razor wire near the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass as part of the enforcement operation, and previously placed buoys in the river to prevent crossings.

Firefighters have treated lacerations and open wounds from people trying to crawl through the concertina wire, Kypuros said. At times, local hospitals get so overwhelmed with patients from the border that wait times for a bed can stretch to two hours, Garcia added.

As thousands of people without pathways to U.S. citizenship wait in squalid, makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border, others attempt dangerous river crossings across the Rio Grande, endangering their own lives and those of their loved ones.

Harish Garcia, who has worked as a firefighter EMT in Eagle Pass for three years, still cannot shake the memory of a drowning mother and her young daughter. Garcia’s crew, including a firefighter with a daughter around the same age as the little girl, loaded the two into an ambulance, he said, but it was too late.

When crews returned to the station, some called their families. Others went quiet, Garcia said.

“Unfortunately, calls are going to keep coming in after that, so we can’t hang on to that for too long,” he said months later. “We have to just let it go and move on to the next call.”

Garcia and Kypuros say they’ve lost count of how many bodies they’ve recovered in recent months. The majority are found after failed attempts to cross the river, but other calls have led fire crews into the rough brush of South Texas, where dehydration and exposure can prove just as deadly.

David Black, a psychologist who has worked with the California law enforcement community for more than 20 years, said witnessing the death of a child is often the most traumatizing event a first responder can experience. Without a strong support system both in and out of the workplace, that stress can eat away at them.

“We outsource our worst-case scenarios to first responders,” he said. “If you have your own children, that can really impact how you look at your own family.”

As Eagle Pass waits for the state grant to be approved, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal workers already have access to mental health resources internally.

The services, which include on-site clinicians and field psychologists, are part of a larger effort to “improve resiliency and encourage our colleagues to seek help when they need it,” said Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner.

Mello said that despite the uncertain nature of the border crisis and the political tensions between the White House and the governor’s office, he is optimistic that help will come.

Until then, he knows the calls for help will keep coming.

Morgan Chesky reported from Eagle Pass, Texas, and Alicia Victoria Lozano from Los Angeles.

Exclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say

 Friends:

This is an urgent matter. What is happening at this very moment along the Rio Grande river, separating Texas from Mexico is appalling. 

I blogged on this more than a month ago on June 13 on the humanitarian disaster in the making in a piece titled, Sinking to the Bottom: As summer temperatures rise, so do the GOP’s dehumanizing policies and rhetoric, by Melissa Del Bosque. Thanks to Del Bosque for keeping us updated. Termed "necropolitics," the racist, anti-immigrant, Texas Republican party traffics in death and this is one of its more extreme manifestations. 

This becomes the real-life manifestation of Texas Young Conservatives' disgusting "catch an illegal immigrant game" that has played out on some college campuses in prior years (Bernier & Dunbar, 2013). However, rather than a theater of the macabre, these actions are finding horrific expression in reality, amounting to state-sanctioned violence. 

Geez, the setting up of razor-wire-wrapped-barrel traps and then denying men, women, and children water is tantamount to premeditated murder. Just as sickening, this "policy project" becomes a spectacle of violence and death to which anyone that lets this happen is a participant, wittingly or unwittingly. So glad that a state trooper has courageously spoken up.

How can we possibly claim to be a beacon to the world on human rights when this tragedy is playing out along the U.S.-Mexico border?

The Biden Administration needs to get involved immediately. I just called Congressman Lloyd Doggett's office on the matter, urging him to exert pressure on Congress and the president to take these traps down immediately. I've already reached out to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus in the Texas House and they, too, see this as an urgent matter and are doing what they can, as well, to investigate this matter and to get the Biden administration involved. We ALL need to be making calls right now!

Reach out to whoever represents you in the Texas State Legislature, as well as in Congress to bring a halt to this state-approved cruelty. If you do not know who represents you, simply go to this link (Who Represents Me) to find out. Not on our watch, my friends.

-Angela Valenzuela

#StopTheCruelty

#necropolitics

Reference

Bernier, N. & Dunbar, W. (2013, Nov. 19). A Brief History of Student Conservatives' 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant' Games (Update), Texas Standard 90.5 FM

Del Bosque, M. (2023, June 13). Sinking to the Bottom: As summer temperatures rise, so do the GOP’s dehumanizing policies and rhetoric, Border Chronicles. 

Exclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say

Benjamin Wermund  July 17, 2023 | Apple News | Updated: July 17, 2023 7:29 p.m.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Migrants cool themselves in the waters of the Rio Grande after crossing to the U.S. from Mexico near a site where the state is installing large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

WASHINGTON — Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.” 

The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.

According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.

The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river. 

The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water. 

“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”

Jerry Lara, San Antonio Epress-News | Migrants walk along concertina wire blocking their entrance to the U.S. in Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine did not comment on all the contents of the trooper’s email, but said there is no policy against giving water to migrants. 

Considine also provided an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw on Saturday calling for an audit to determine if more can be done to minimize the risk to migrants. McCraw wrote troopers should warn migrants not to cross the wire, redirect them to ports of entry and to closely watch for anyone who needs medical attention. 

In another email, McCraw acknowledged that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire, including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed “elevated medical attention” from July 4 to July 13. Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.

“The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying to cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.” 

Texas Department of Public Safety personnel are seen in a closed off area of a public park by the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023.

The incidents detailed in the email come as Abbott has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to physically bar migrants from entering the country through his Operation Lone Star initiative, escalating tensions between state and federal officials and drawing increased scrutiny from humanitarian groups who say the state is endangering asylum seekers. The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass.

The state has also now deployed a wall of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, which triggered complaints over the weekend from Mexico. 

Federal Border Patrol officials have issued internal warnings that the razor wire is preventing their agents from reaching at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings in the Rio Grande, Hearst Newspapers reported last week. 

The DPS trooper expressed similar concerns, writing that the placement of the wire along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”

The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1. 

According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute. They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said. 

The governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so. 

“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally," said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. "President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that’s unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis.” 

The DPS trooper’s email details four incidents in just one day in which migrants were caught in the wire or injured trying to get around it. 

On June 30, troopers found a group of people along the wire, including a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire and was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them,” the email says. The DPS trooper wrote that the temperature was “well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out from exhaustion. 

“We provided treatment to the unresponsive patient and transferred care to EMS,” the trooper wrote. A spokesperson for the Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.

In another instance, troopers found a 19-year-old woman “in obvious pain” stuck in the wire. She was cut free and given a medical assessment, which determined she was pregnant and having a miscarriage. She was then transferred to EMS.

The trooper also treated a man with a “significant laceration” in his left leg, who said he had cut it while trying to free his child who was “stuck on a trap in the water,” describing a barrel with razor wire “all over it.” And the trooper treated a 15-year-old boy who broke his right leg walking in the river because the razor wire was “laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.”

In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the email says. 

The trooper wrote that the troopers decided it was not the right thing to do “with the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.” They called command again and expressed their concerns and were given the order to “tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. After they left, other troopers worked with Border Patrol to provide care to the migrants, the email said. 

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Migrants trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico approach the site where workers are assembling large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Tuesday, July 11, 2023.

The trooper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His email was shared by a confidential source with knowledge of border operations. It was unclear whether the trooper received a response from the sergeant he’d messaged. 

Considine acknowledged that DPS was aware of the email and provided the additional agency emails in response. Those emails detail seven other incidents reported by federal border agents in which migrants were injured on the wires, including a child who was taken to the hospital on Thursday with cuts on his left arm, a mother and child who were taken to the hospital on Wednesday with “minor lacerations” on their “lower extremities,” and another migrant taken to San Antonio on July 4 to receive treatment for “several lacerations” that required staples.

Victor Escalon, a DPS director who oversees South Texas, wrote in an email Friday to other agency officials that troopers “may need to open the wire to aid individuals in medical distress, maintain the peace, and/or to make an arrest for criminal trespass, criminal mischief, acts of violence, or other State crimes.

“Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. “As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”

Rancher fighting illegal immigration says fence not the answer

TEXAS RANCHER
Rancher fighting illegal immigration says fence not the answer
Leader of volunteer patrol group wants more money for local and state law enforcement.


By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, June 30, 2007

BROOKS COUNTY — Though he is not in law enforcement, Mike Vickers is a witness to the gruesome, tragic consequences of illegal immigration. He sees them in his "backyard" amid the vast, rugged ranches of South Texas.

Large processions of illegal immigrants and human and drug smugglers, sometimes in groups of 30 or more, regularly cut through his cattle ranch south of Falfurrias to skirt a Border Patrol checkpoint. The checkpoint off U.S. 281 is about four miles south of Vickers' home and 1,000-acre ranch, and about 70 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Many of the trespassers don't make it out alive.

Vickers, gleaning from figures compiled in Brooks and nearby counties, estimates that close to 200 people have died on private ranches during the past two years. He and his neighbors routinely find the cadavers, skulls and body parts.

The victims — many are unidentified — probably died of exposure.

Vickers thinks some might have been abandoned or murdered by smugglers; the bodies are too decayed to tell for sure.

With his bushy mustache and cowboy hat and boots, Vickers is a stern-faced fixture at public forums on illegal immigration.

He testified forcefully at the Legislature this year, advocating for state money for local and state law enforcement officers who have been drawn into the illegal immigration fight.

Though Vickers has become one of the public faces of frustration with illegal immigration, he thinks a border fence is not the answer.

"I think it's a waste of money," Vickers said.

The former head of the the Texas Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Vickers now leads the Texas Border Volunteers, a group including fellow ranchers who own 1.5 million acres in 11 South Texas counties.

Usually once a month, armed and equipped with night vision and other equipment, the volunteers patrol around the clock for days at a time, reporting trespassers to the Border Patrol.

Vickers also owns about 160 acres of farmland off the Rio Grande, south of Pharr. He doesn't want a fence cutting off access to irrigation water.

A solution, he says, lies in more officers, more money and resources for local and state law enforcement, and a guest worker program. "There's no law and order out here," Vickers said.

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/07/01/0701fence_rancher.html

A wall of discontent

Great coverage in today's American Statesman of the fence/wall border debate. -Angela

A wall of discontent
Along the Rio Grande in South Texas, locals say a border fence will wreak havoc on lives

Click-2-Listen
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 01, 2007

In the Texas and Mexican consciousness, the Rio Grande is a particularly fluid character in the epic sweep of history.

The lifeblood of arid flatlands in dozens of South Texas border communities such as Mission, the river yields bountiful harvests of sugar cane, corn, citrus, cotton and other crops. For centuries, the Rio Grande has also nourished a unique way of life.

In sister cities on both sides, residents embrace a transcultural identity in which the river does not divide so much as it unites. Many speak two languages, a reality captured cheekily in an area auto dealer's TV ads proclaiming "Aquí también se habla inglés!" ("English is also spoken here!") They have compadres and familia on either side of the river. People, commerce and goods flow freely in two directions, and always have.

But by the end of 2008, Washington plans to erect 70 miles of fencing in the Rio Grande Valley to deter illegal immigration. It will cut residents off from the river and from their Mexican neighbors, and it could separate farmers from their fields.

That prospect is creating an uproar in communities up and down the border, where much of the land is in private hands.

"It's an American Berlin Wall," said Mike Allen, an economic development booster in neighboring McAllen and a leader in the Texas Border Coalition, elected and economic development leaders from El Paso to Brownsville who oppose the fence.

Federal officials say they haven't decided on the design of the barrier, which they describe as a component of the Secure Border Initiative.

Like the Berlin Wall, its symbolic presence looms even larger than the physical reality, especially in Texas, which claims the longest stretch — 1,240 miles — of the roughly 2,000-mile long border with Mexico.

Less than 20 percent of the border — 370 miles — would be fenced, at a reported initial cost of $1.2 billion, or $3.3 million per mile. It will not be a continuous barricade but an intermittent one, totaling about 150 miles along the Texas side of the Rio Grande, mostly on more populous segments of the river.

Although the fence may have only modest impact on illegal immigration, it makes a powerful statement against the notion that borders are nothing more than inconveniences to be overcome, said Steven Camarota with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based research group that advocates stronger enforcement of immigration laws. The vast majority of Americans don't see the border that way, he said.

"That fence reminds us of American national sovereignty," Camarota said.

But in the Valley, on the front lines of one of illegal immigration's busiest corridors, it's also a reminder of something else: the wasteful folly of outsiders who don't comprehend the region's economic, historical and cultural realities.

"If you want to stop (illegal immigration), fix it so that they can't get a job," said Charles Loop, a retired 72-year-old farmer in Brownsville, whose family has worked the land since the 1920s. "Haven't they always found a way to get in?"

Stemming the flow

The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 1.1 million illegal immigrants in 2006, 8 percent fewer than the year before, a decrease Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff attributed to tougher border enforcement deterring crossers.

But the benchmark does not measure the number of people who evade arrest. Since 2000 — despite more agents, more resources, money and technology poured into border enforcement — the unauthorized population in the U.S. has grown an average of more than 500,000 per year, to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. (Only half are thought to have entered the country illegally, however; the rest overstayed visas.)

About 75 miles of fencing and barriers already exist on the southwestern border with Mexico. Whether the most famous stretch, 14 miles of mostly solid wall separating San Diego from Tijuana, has been successful is a matter of dispute.

Built more than a decade ago, supporters hailed dramatic reductions in apprehensions and crime. But analysts said the fencing simply funneled immigrants to remote, dangerous crossings in the mountains and deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, where thousands have died.

South Texas landowners, farmers, and business and elected leaders prefer more border agents, cameras and sensors, as well as "more opportunities for immigrants to enter the country legally, so that the Border Patrol isn't spending all its time running after maids and dishwashers and gardeners," Allen said.

Angry that they have had little influence on the plans for the fence, they assert that it will harm the economy and business relationships with their Mexican neighbors, Texas' biggest trading partner, and that it will quash property rights and cut off farmers and ranchers from the precious Rio Grande.

Another serious concern is that a fence will destroy the area's treasured habitat and wildlife, which feeds a lucrative eco-tourism industry.

"This wall is stupid," said the Rev. Roy Snipes, a Catholic priest and pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Mission. "It's going to be a tomb for the free, friendly, hospitable spirit."

But Joe Metz and his wife, Sharon, who farm on 1,100 riverfront acres about 10 miles west of Mission, think differently. They say more people would speak out in favor of the fence if they didn't fear being labeled racists.

The Metzes say immigrants regularly cut through their land, usually in large groups and with a smuggler. And drug runners unload marijuana and other drugs at landings just steps from the rows of grain sorghum Joe farms. A highway a quarter-mile away is their get-away route.

The Metzes don't feel safe anymore. They think a fence will help.

"You feel a certain amount of violation with people crossing your property all the time," 68-year-old Metz says with a flash of anger after pointing out a barbed-wire fence that someone — he presumes illegal immigrants — tampered with to gain access to his land.

Just downriver, joined by his two black Labradors and his friend Allen, Snipes pilots his flat-bottomed fishing boat, carving a smooth path in the Rio Grande's green waters.

On both sides of the river, the earliest settlers, indigenous Coahuiltecans, lived off the land for more than a thousand years. About half a century after their demise, the town of Mission took root on the same riverbanks in 1908.

Despite the Border Patrol's pervasive presence — in the air, in the water and on the riverbanks the Coahuiltecans once settled — the sun-kissed setting is lazy and serene.

Herons glide overhead. Turtles sunbathe, and horses cool off in the river, about a football field wide. Tall reeds sway in the gusty breezes. On the Mexican side, workers clearing brush for a park wave to Snipes.

"It's no war zone out here," Snipes says. "This is beautiful."

Virtual fencing

In 2006, Congress approved fencing along 700 miles of the border with Mexico, and President Bush signed the bill into law. The Homeland Security Department has since said that only 370 miles will be actual fence; the rest will be vehicle barriers and a "virtual" fence of agents, sensors, cameras and other technology.

The government says it hasn't decided exactly where the fence will go in the Rio Grande Valley or what it will look like but promises to consider the concerns of landowners.

It has disavowed a map of the fence, attached to a confidential U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo, which sparked local outrage when it was made public in May. Federal officials said the map was premature.

According to The (McAllen) Monitor, the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley spokesman said recently that about 70 miles of fence would be built in sections between Brownsville and Roma, and that they would be mostly in urban areas.

Texas' U.S. senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both Republicans, voted for the fence. Both say they are working to ensure that locals are heard.

Metz said a border agent met with him to ask his opinion about erecting a fence just north of the flood-control levee and the river. That would place Metz's home north of the barrier and much of his farmland south of it.

According to Metz, the agent said he would have access to his crops and the river through 30-foot-wide gates allowing his farm equipment to pass through.

"It's not going to affect our irrigation a bit," Metz said, scoffing at the idea that a fence will ruin farmers.

On that point and others, Metz gets plenty of argument.

One of opponents' biggest fears is that anything south of the border fence will become a virtual no-man's land, endangering properties up and down the Valley: ranchlands, farmlands, businesses, homes and vast acres of federally protected wildlife refuges.

John McClung, president of the Mission-based Texas Produce Association, said most of his members oppose a fence because they worry that it will cut them off from the irrigation pumps that suck water from the Rio Grandeto feed their crops. If forced to give up their farmland, they wonder whether the government will give them "genuine fair market value."

The co-owner of the iconic palapa-covered outdoor dining and dancing spot near Mission, Pepe's on the River, said a fence will put him out of business.

"What's it going to be called?" Maggie Trujillo asked rhetorically. "Pepe's on the Fence? Pepe's on the Levee?"

Waste of money?

Like the river, immigrants from Mexico — both legal and illegal — have flowed through the Valley for generations.

Snipes, whose church hosts youth camps on the riverbanks, described a back-in-the-day ritual that was equal parts humanitarian and neighborly: landowners leaving out food for immigrant Mexican families who occasionally crossed their property on their way north.

But some say that all began to change dramatically about 20 years ago. The small groups of four or five grew larger and larger. Mexicans were joined by foreigners from all over the world. Drug smugglers joined the processions.

Allen and other border leaders contend that the fence will undo years of work to build business relationships with Mexico and to lift the Valley out of economic morass.

The 69-year-old border coalition leader was a Catholic priest in one of the oldest and poorest churches in McAllen, the Valley's largest city and one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, before changing careers to champion economic development. He founded the McAllen Economic Development Corp. in 1988 and is now on medical leave there.

Twenty years ago, about one in four workers in Hidalgo County was out of a job. Today, unemployment is less than 6 percent, and the Valley is riding the coattails of a surging maquiladora industry that Allen said has recruited more than 200 companies, creating more than 125,000 jobs in industrial parks south of the river in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and another 25,000 in the McAllen region.

McAllen Mayor Ricardo Cortez said Mexican shoppers account for about 40 percent of the city's gross domestic product. Mexican entrepreneurs want to invest in Valley businesses and are buying second homes here, said Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce.

But "the message we're sending to Mexico is 'Don't come, Don't bring your money. We don't want you.' It's crazy," Ahlenius said.

It's not unusual for business leaders on both sides of the river to think as one, said Nestor Rodriguez, a University of Houston sociologist who has done extensive research in sister cities on the river.

"If you're in Washington, you're not going to appreciate this, but the cities on the border, over centuries, built a community that transcends the border, and they feel this is one community," Rodriguez said.

Federal officials have given no indication that they will change their minds, asserting that they have a mandate from the American people and Congress to put up a fence.

"I think folks do need to understand that there are areas on the border where fencing would work and that in those areas, it will be constructed," said Brian Walsh, Cornyn's spokesman.

The border coalition isn't giving up.

"We're hoping we can convince the majority of people and Congress that this is a waste of money for America, not just the border," Allen said.

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635

1,952 miles

Length of U.S. border

with Mexico

1,240 miles

Length of Texas border

with Mexico

150 miles

Estimated length of Texas border to be fenced

70 miles

Estimated length of fencing in Rio Grande Valley


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