"Alligator Alcatraz: A Monument to Cruelty in the Heart of the Everglades," by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

 Alligator Alcatraz: A Monument to Cruelty in the Heart of the Everglades

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

It's time to resurrect the term necropolitics, meaning the politics of death wielded by the state to determine who lives and who dies, who is allowed dignity, and who is cast into suffering or oblivion.

The last time I used this term was in reference to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s inhumane river buoys near Eagle Pass, a lethal barrier meant to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. I wrote then, in a blog titled "First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande"—based on a published piece by that same title (Chesky & Lozano, 2024)—where I ask how we can be proud of our country and allow this to happen?

Source: Al Jazeera

Today, necropolitics rears its head once more—this time in the Florida Everglades, where Donald Trump has unveiled a new migrant detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” (Louallen, 2025). Surrounded by swampland and wildlife, the site is a literal and symbolic enclosure, built to house around 5,000 migrants in trailers and tents, in isolation and obscurity.

During a recent visit to the site, Trump joked:

“Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, gesturing in a zigzag motion.
“And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.” (Gomez Licon, 2025)

This is not humor. This is the normalization of dehumanization, delivered with a smirk. When a former president laughs about migrants being hunted by alligators, he is not merely mocking human suffering—he is sending a message: that cruelty is permissible, and even entertaining.

To joke about people—many of them children—fleeing war, violence, and poverty, and to reduce their desperate bid for safety to a punchline, is not just disturbing. It is authoritarian pageantry. It is a theater of the macabre. It is racist. It is white supremacy on steroids.

We’ve seen where this logic leads in history. First, the jokes. Then the walls. Then the cages. What comes next—camps? Ovens?

We cannot become numb.

There is nothing funny about people risking their lives to survive. There is nothing lighthearted about building prison compounds in ecologically sensitive swamps. And there is nothing acceptable about a political leader mocking the very people whose rights and humanity he systematically undermines.

This isn’t immigration policy.

This is punishment by design.

The location—less than 1,000 feet from Miccosukee tribal villages—is not incidental. It is another instance of Indigenous sovereignty being trampled, as tribal leaders have made clear. Miccosukee Business Council Chairman Talbert Cypress warned of the grave environmental and cultural impacts: no meaningful environmental study has been conducted, and the facility sits in the heart of the Big Cypress National Preserve, where tribal families have lived for generations (Louallen, 2025).

To make matters worse, Trump has announced plans to replicate this model in Louisiana and Alabama (Louallen, 2025), expanding a blueprint of cruelty while bypassing legal due process and basic humanitarian norms.

Let this be the moment we refuse complicity through silence.

Let this be the moment we stand—unapologetically—with migrants, with Indigenous nations, with environmental defenders, and with all who resist this dystopian vision of America.

References

Chesky, M., & Lozano, A. V. (2024, Feb. 25). First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande, 

Gomez Licon, A. (2025, July 2). Trump jokes about immigrants being attacked by alligators during ‘Florida Alcatraz’ tour: "Don't run in a straight line. Run like this’ Mr Trump said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion, The Independent. 

Louallen, D. (2025, July 1). Florida tribe fights new 'Alligator Alcatraz' migrant facility near Everglades homes: Tribal chairman says the facility threatens tribal camps and local ecosystem. ABC News

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down, Washington Post, Dec. 8, 2024

Earlier this year in February, I alerted blog readers to this bone-chilling NBCNews.com report from workers whose job it is to recover bodies out of the water in the Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras border. First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande [trigger warning]. Such macabre jobs should not even exist to begin with!

Migrants often opt for Eagle Pass, a city of 28,000, as a crossing point due to its proximity to a relatively safer region of Mexico, and a modicum of distance from criminal elements, despite the Rio Grande's characteristic challenging conditions. This includes strong currents, variable water levels, extreme temperatures, and, of course, the presence of "la migra," or the border patrol, in an area that is more militarized than ever. 

There's a good reason why Mexicans give the Rio Grande River its name, "El Rio Bravo," meaning "wild river." El río es traicionero, meaning that the river is treacherous. To this, add Governor Abbott's cruel razor wire on the buoys (boyas) that make it a savage and inhumane border that has taken a shocking number of lives.

Between 2017 and 2023, at least 1,107 individuals drowned while attempting to cross the river, with the highest number of fatalities occurring in 2022, coinciding with a significant increase in attempts to enter the United States. Notably, there was a rise in the number of women among the deceased, and in 2023, over 10 percent of the drownings involved children. The story of 4-year old Angelica is gripping. It's so sad and tragic to learn—from this very well-researched Washington Post piece—that 75 children or more drowned in the river over this 7-year timeframe.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration have disagreed on how to manage this influx, with the state implementing cruel and lethal measures such as buoys (boyas) with razor wire and shipping containers that serve as barriers to river crossing. Knowing that so many people are literally losing their lives should force policymakers—especially the governor—to pause and reflect on how at some point, the collateral effects of policy with people losing their lives become indistinguishable from deliberately engineering it.

My heart aches when I read of migrants preferring this risk over that of losing their lives figuratively and literally in their countries of origin. Longer term, our countries in our hemisphere need to embark on a new path forward, one that involves large-scale investment to stimulate economic development, involving massive infrastructure projects while addressing systemic challenges, encouraging the development of binational institutions, and various other measures like investments in education and a spirit of binationalism and multinationalism that would promote stability across the region.

Regrettably, our country has chosen to take an extremely hardline approach, turning away from opportunities that could benefit everyone and address the root causes of migration—ensuring people wouldn’t have to risk life and limb to seek a better future for themselves and their families. With Donald Trump coming into power, it's only going to get worse.

-Angela Valenzuela

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down

An investigation by The Washington Post and other news organizations found more deaths than Mexico or the U.S. have reported. Many were in Eagle Pass, where the Texas governor’s border crackdown is concentrated.


Migrants wade into the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Sept. 28. (Video: Jabin Botsford)

December 8, 2024

By Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez


EAGLE PASS, Texas — Angelica had journeyed with her parents, older brother, aunt and uncle by foot from South America through a muddy jungle, ridden atop sooty train cars and slept in noisy city plazas hoping to reach the United States.

Now it was dawn and the 4-year-old girl’s family could see their destination from across the Rio Grande. The adults sent messages to relatives back in Venezuela before stepping into the river with the two children.

“Ya no aguantamos más,” wrote Robiet Farías, Angelica’s uncle, saying he could not bear waiting anymore to enter the United States.

Santiago, left, and his uncle, Robiet Farías, ride atop a Mexican train headed for the U.S. border in November 2023. (Family photo)

The family held one another’s hands and formed a chain with other migrants crossing the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass that November day in 2023. But as they got deeper into the river, something went wrong. Panic set in. The Farías family disappeared into the water.

This stretch of the Rio Grande has become a graveyard as the number of people dying while trying to cross rises. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have drowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

Wristbands scattered in the mud on the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. The bands are typically used by smugglers to verify that migrants have paid for their crossing. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)



Clothes belonging to migrants are tangled in concertina razor wire near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The news organizations collected death records from every Texas county and Mexican state that borders the Rio Grande since 2017, when President-elect Donald Trump first took office pledging to crack down on illegal migration, to examine the effects of enforcement and migration policies on asylum seekers, and whether these factors have increased drownings.

The data shows that at least 1,107 people drowned trying to cross the river in the seven years from 2017 to 2023. The deaths peaked in 2022 as the number of people trying to enter the United States soared. A rising number of women were among the dead. In 2023, more than 1 in 10 drownings involved a child.

The spike in deaths coincided with a record surge in people attempting to cross into the United States illegally. Many of those migrants chose to cross the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, a city of 28,000 that has emerged as a flash point in the nation’s debate over migration. Abbott and the Biden administration have clashed over how to respond to the surge, with the Texas governor installing dozens of miles of razor wire, shipping containers and buoys, and the White House accusing the state of blocking its access to the river.

Migrants often choose Eagle Pass because it is across the river from a part of Mexico that is considered safer than other regions controlled by criminal gangs. But the river there has a significant current in certain areas, and gets deeper as people reach the midpoint. Weeds and rocks can make it difficult to get one’s footing.




The records obtained by the news organizations show drownings in Eagle Pass have risen significantly in recent years. The Post and its partners mapped the fatalities there using location data provided on death records. The analysis shows that as the number of deaths rose, bodies increasingly began washing up in new locations

From 2017 to 2020, more than half the victims in Eagle Pass were found near the downtown area. After 2021, the year that Operation Lone Star began, drowning victims were largely discovered away from the city’s center.

While it is unclear whether Texas’s border security initiative caused that shift, interviews with dozens of asylum seekers, state and federal law enforcement officials, migration experts and elected officials indicate that the barriers pushed migrants to cross in new and, sometimes, more dangerous areas.

“The intention is to make it more difficult for people,” said Margarita Núñez Chaim, the coordinator for Iberoamericana University’s migration issues program in Mexico. “And that, as a result, makes it more deadly.”

Abbott’s office disputed the idea that Operation Lone Star might have contributed to any deaths, saying that the initiative is deterring migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. In a statement, officials said the Biden administration is to blame for increased drownings by encouraging people to “make the unsafe and illegal trek across the border, ultimately taking the lives of migrants.”

White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said the Biden administration has reduced border crossings by more than 55 percent since introducing new restrictions on applying for asylum in June. He called the president’s approach “effective and balanced,” and said that Republican officials are more interested in “dangerous and inhumane political stunts than securing our border.”

Deaths dipped by nearly 40 percent in the state in 2023, but data from Customs and Border Protection show they rose this year.

For the Farías family, crossing the Rio Grande felt like their best choice. They had fled Venezuela for Peru, but quickly realized there would be few opportunities to advance their lives there. Thousands of Venezuelans were wading across the river into Texas and claiming asylum. Angelica’s parents planned to do the same. The Post is identifying the girl by only her middle name because she is a child.

It wasn’t long after they entered the water that another migrant found Angelica clinging to her father’s back as his corpse floated near a pecan orchard called Heavenly Farms. She was alive.

Other people who had been traveling with the family took her to authorities. They told officers her first name. But they knew almost nothing else about her. Her entire family was dead.

For decades, it was mostly men — usually from Mexico or Central America — who braved the river to find work in the United States.

But as gang violence, chronic poverty and political instability grew, many more women and children began making the journey in the mid-2010s. Smugglers spread the word that minors were released quickly and allowed to stay in the United States. By 2014, so many children were crossing the border alone that President Barack Obama declared it an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

Then in 2020 came the pandemic. Migration to the United States plummeted, but a year later, people began making their way to the Rio Grande. Entire families from countries such as Venezuela were arriving. Unlike those who had crossed years earlier, they wanted to surrender to U.S. authorities in hopes of qualifying for asylum.

Migrants are detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents moments after crossing into Eagle Pass 

on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Migrants wait to be processed by Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass after crossing the Rio Grande on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Death records reviewed by The Post and its news partners reflect that changing dynamic. More and more people from South American countries began washing up dead in Texas and Mexico. 

In 2022, women made up nearly 22 percent of all deaths, higher than any of the other years examined. At least 75 children drowned in the river from 2017 to 2023.

The Rev. Paulo Alfonso Sánchez, who operates a shelter in Monclova, a city many migrants stop at on their way to Eagle Pass, said that in the fall of 2023 rumors began spreading about various dates by which an asylum-seeker had to reach the United States before Biden would bar them from entering. The information was false, and immigration advocates think it probably came from organized crime groups seeking to stoke urgency.

“It was a desperate situation,” Sánchez said. “Big groups tried to cross, stepping over each other at the riverbank and both sides, U.S. and Mexico, had to rescue people.”



Texas DPS pull migrants in distress from the Rio Grande. [Go to link to see the
harrowing video.]

The Post and its partners documented 858 migrant drownings in Texas from 2017 to 2023, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 587 along the entire southwest border during that time. The agency is required under federal law to record how many people die trying to enter the country each year, though federal investigators have acknowledged the data is incomplete.

Asked about the discrepancy, a CBP official noted the challenges in collecting data on migrant deaths, and said the unit tasked with tracking those fatalities has a limited budget, though Congress has offered more funds in recent years.

Sister Isabel Turcios runs Frontera Digna, a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, and estimates that in 2023, about 4,000 showed up in the city each day. She said most people went straight to the river without resting. Many were afraid of being robbed, beaten or deported by Mexican officials and wanted to leave quickly.

Across the river, migrants now found towering shipping containers, giant buoys in the water and armed troops. They were all part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which the Texas governor launched after accusing the Biden administration of not doing enough to curb illegal immigration.

"Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in announcing the initiative.

On the Mexican side of the border, migrants encountered more soldiers patrolling the border. Then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had deployed thousands of troops to crack down on illegal immigration in response to pressure from then-President Trump. By 2022, there were 11,500 troops stationed along Mexico’s northern border — nearly twice as many as there were three years before.

A spokesperson for Abbott’s office said the state has put up hundreds of miles of barriers such as fences and shipping containers, as well as more than 51 miles of border wall. Reporters from The Post and partner news organizations mapped approximately 250 miles of state and federal security infrastructure using available satellite imagery through 2023.

The mapping of the state’s barriers showed that at least 40 percent of the fences, buoys and other deterrence devices erected as part of Operation Lone Star were concentrated in and around Eagle Pass.

That included a fence near Heavenly Farms. The sprawling property where Angelica’s father was found is about four miles from downtown Eagle Pass and filled with rows of pecan trees. In 2023, more and more bodies were turning up there.



The Texas National Guard patrols the Rio Grande on Sept. 26 near Eagle Pass. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Border agents had long patrolled the Rio Grande near the pecan orchard by boat. But migrants still frequently passed through Heavenly Farms after crossing into the United States.

In 2022, Operation Lone Star law officers built a fence along the river near the farm. Soon after, they deployed spools of sharp concertina wire by the banks. And in the summer of 2023, troops placed a thousand feet of large orange buoys on the water close to the property.

Border Patrol agents began cutting Abbott’s concertina wire to reach migrants. They claimed Texas state troopers had blocked their agents from a boat ramp at a municipal park. The standoff shifted from the border to the courts as Texas and the Biden administration took turns suing each other in legal disputes over buoys, wire and river access.

Meanwhile, the number of people found dead in the Rio Grande near Heavenly Farms was rising.





The deaths mapped by The Post and its partners and available satellite imagery show that two drowning victims were found near the farm in the five years before a fence was constructed along the property. Thirty-three victims were discovered in that same area in the two years after the fence was built.

There was the Venezuelan folk musician trying to join his niece in the United States. The man from the Ivory Coast whose family did not find out he was dead for two years. The 6-year-old boy from Colombia who’d lost his mother’s grip as they entered the water.




Large orange buoys float in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Nov. 15, 2023. (Video: Justin Hamel for Lighthouse Reports)

Texas National Guard concertina razor wire, fencing and buoys are seen along the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The data on drowning deaths alone is not sufficient to show whether any of the new barriers played a role in the deaths. Where people are found does not necessarily indicate where they crossed. But interviews with migrants and shelter operators indicate that more and more migrants were choosing to cross away from Shelby Park, a green space near the city’s downtown where troops were concentrated, to more isolated parts of the river.

Abbott and others admonished migrants for not choosing legal options, such as surrendering at a port of entry. In the fall of 2023, when Angelica’s family crossed, the Biden administration was asking migrants to request an appointment at an official U.S. port of entry through its CBP One app.

Angelica’s parents had registered through CBP One. But that was just the first step in the process. Getting an appointment could take months. And many migrants felt they could not wait. Some had run out of money. Others thought it was too dangerous to stay in Mexico.

Immigrant advocates in Mexico also said Mexican officials and organized crime groups were blocking migrants from accessing border bridges, unless they had an appointment.

For many people, the river felt like the best way to quickly get into the United States.

Migrants cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Angelica’s parents had met working at Venezuela’s Department of Health.

They were both analysts, and they dreamed of building a life together while advancing their careers in the medical field. Zelnays came from a family of three close-knit siblings who had lost their mother when they were all still teens. An aunt, Norkys Farías, had taken them in and continued to raise them as her own.

Miguel Perez Carles fit right into Zelnays’s family. He had a knack for making her laugh with jokes and funny stories. The two gathered frequently with her family in the coastal city of La Guaira to celebrate milestones.

Their daughter arrived in 2019. Zelnays had a son, Santiago, 11, from a previous relationship. Family members said he was a talented soccer player who wanted to attend a specialized academy for the sport.

But their life in Venezuela grew more difficult as hyperinflation skyrocketed and the nation’s economy tumbled. So when her sister left for Peru, they followed.

“They had a vision, as young people do, for the life they wanted to live,” said Lizmar Farías, Zelnays’s cousin. “They wanted to help the family and build a house.”

After some time in Peru, they decided as a group they would have better luck realizing their goals in the United States.

The journey from Lima to the U.S. border with Mexico was difficult. In a group chat with relatives back home, they recounted sleeping on streets as they moved from one country to the next. When they reached Panama, they crossed the perilous Darien Gap, a jungle that is home to jaguars, anacondas and venomous insects. They told their family members that they sat in their tents terrified at night listening to the sounds of animals lurking nearby.

They’d managed to endure all of it by staying united, relatives said.

“They were always together,” Lizmar said. “In photo after photo, at the beach, in the city, at birthdays, they were inseparable.”

They reached the Mexican border with Texas early on Nov. 18, according to interviews with relatives and information from other migrants.

Francisco Contreras, director of the state civil protection services in Piedras Negras, remembers the soaring number of people trying to cross around that time. He said there were groups of 400 or 500 people gathering at different points along the riverbank. The width of the river near Eagle Pass is between 250 and 300 feet.

His team and Mexico’s migrant rescue squad, Grupos Beta, were repeatedly called to help pull screaming children and splashing adults from the water. He said they performed CPR on too many people for him to count.

“You know we always ask them why — why risk their children?” Contreras said. “And they always tell us, they’d rather die here, in this river, than back in their countries.”

Texas Department of Public Safety agents patrolling the river the day Angelica’s family crossed told Maverick County Sheriff’s deputies that about 200 migrants were attempting to cross together from Mexico, according to incident reports.

A group of migrants struggle to cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass on Nov. 18, 2023. (Video: Justin Hamel for Lighthouse Reports) [Go to link to see video.]


The family linked arms as a human chain and waded into the Rio Grande with other migrants. As they got deeper into the water, chaos ensued. The relatives got separated.

A Maverick County Sheriff’s Office incident report of the Farías family drowning states that 14 to 16 people “were visualized to have been taken by the river’s strong current.”

A woman who was traveling with the family later told Angelica’s relatives in Venezuela that she saw a man she didn’t recognize holding the child’s hand and leading her to Border Patrol agents. The child had been rescued after someone noticed her clinging to her father’s back. He was dead, and his body floated down the river toward the pecan farm.

Border agents patrolling the river on boats recovered Zelnays’s body from the water. She had a printout of the family’s CBP One registration email in her pocket. The bodies of her siblings, Thailyz and Robiet Farías, were found together near a cement plant’s boat ramp. Angelica’s brother, Santiago, is thought to be in a morgue in neighboring Webb County, but officials are awaiting DNA confirmation.

Word did not reach their relatives in Venezuela for 10 days. A migrant who had been traveling with the family sent them a message on Facebook.

In an instant, Norkys had lost five family members. She had reason to believe Angelica was still alive. But she had no idea how to find her.




A makeshift memorial is set up at a park along the Rio Grande in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on Sept. 26. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Angelica’s family in Venezuela scoured the internet for any information about the girl with dark eyes that they knew as “Caraota,” or bean.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela are strained, so Norkys and her relatives had to rely on the International Red Cross and consular officials in Mexico to make inquiries. They called every Texas and Mexico number that might have information. For weeks, they could not figure out where she was.

But a worker at a funeral home in Eagle Pass had given them reason to hope. He told them that Angelica’s relatives were dead, but that officials had confirmed to him that she had indeed survived.

A month after her family drowned, Angelica surfaced in the U.S. immigration system. U.S. officials had taken her to a shelter for young unaccompanied migrants. With no relatives in the United States, child welfare advocates began arranging her return to Venezuela. It would take an additional eight months to bring her home.

During that time, the number of people crossing the Rio Grande dropped. Mexican authorities continued to stop migrants from reaching the river, and the Biden administration imposed new restrictions on applying for asylum over the summer.

But many migrants are still wading into the Rio Grande. Migrants interviewed at shelters in the Mexican state of Coahuila, across from Eagle Pass, said Texas troops have begun using rubber bullets and pepper balls to deter them. One pregnant woman showed a Post reporter marks on her belly where she said she had been hit. A spokesperson for the Texas Military Department said Operation Lone Star troops do not use rubber bullets or tear gas.




Angelica reunites with her family at the airport in Venezuela. (Video: Lizmar Farías)

Angelica flew home to Venezuela in August dressed in a pink top and jeans. Her curly black hair was tied up with a matching bow. Norkys and her mother’s cousins waited for her at the airport in Caracas.

When they saw her tiny figure walking through the terminal, they called out: “Caraota!” She turned in their direction and giggled nervously. When she got close, Norkys bent down so that Angelica could see her face up close.

Angelica studied her gray hair and brown eyes. Then she opened her arms. She nestled her face in Norkys’s neck and didn’t let go.

***

Charlotte Alfred, Ariadne Papagapitos, Jason Buch, Michael Gonzalez, Geysha Espirella, Carola Briceño, Jorge Luis Sierra, Priscila Cardenas, Cecilia Diaz, Imogen Piper and Jordan Lindbeck contributed to this report.

The Washington Post, El Universal and Lighthouse Reports spent a year collecting drowning data from every Texas county and Mexican state that lines the Rio Grande for the years 2017 to 2023.
Based on the research of academics, experts and reporters, we identified all the local, state and federal authorities in Mexico and the United States that collect reports or data on Rio Grande drownings. Reporters submitted requests to 165 different authorities in the two countries, ultimately obtaining data from 52 sources. Although challenges were encountered in the United States, data availability and completeness were particularly problematic in Mexico, where neither the federal Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs nor the National Institute of Migration could provide usable data. Additionally, the municipality of Juárez did not provide any data. Decedent age was included in only 16 percent of the cases from Mexican sources.
Data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Safety Initiative Tracking System, which was checked against annual CBP figures, was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests from Bryce Peterson of the Arizona-based humanitarian organization No More Deaths, University of Texas researcher Stephanie Leutert and from a request by journalist Gabriela Villegas that was published on MuckRock.
Because data came in different formats and layouts, all information was manually entered into standardized spreadsheets and then spot-checked for accuracy. It was deduplicated to remove cases where multiple agencies had reported the same death. To avoid overcounting, drownings that were one day apart, within 1 mile of each other or had spelling variations of the same name were considered matches for duplicate values.
We counted all deaths that occurred directly as a result of an attempt to cross the Rio Grande. This included cases where drowning was a contributing cause of death or where death occurred elsewhere, such as cases where a cardiac arrest triggered by drowning led to death in the hospital. One case in 2016 involved a fetus of 30-31 weeks gestational age who died as a result of the mother’s drowning.
We excluded deaths of U.S. nationals, as well as cases where bodies were recovered with signs of potential criminal involvement, such as gunshot wounds or mutilation.
If geographic coordinates were missing from reports, we geocoded by hand locations wherever possible. Reporters who had travelled to the area reviewed incident reports that used local landmarks or ranch owners’ names to describe a location. If a location was too large (such as a ranch that spans 10 miles along the river), no coordinates were assigned. Ultimately, 551 drownings reported by U.S. agencies were geolocated.
We plotted nearly 250 miles of security infrastructure – including fences, federal border walls, containers, and a floating buoy barrier – along the Rio Grande using satellite imagery through 2023 from Planet Explorer, Google Earth Pro and Maxar Technologies. We distinguished between federal and state infrastructure projects by cross-referencing satellite images with official statements, news reports and witness accounts, and compared satellite imagery from various dates to determine when each barrier was completed. Read the full methodology here.
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By Arelis R. HernándezArelis Hernández is a Texas-based border correspondent on the national desk working with the immigration team and roving the U.S. southern border. Hernández joined the Post in 2014 to cover politics and government on the local desk after spending four years as a breaking news and crime reporter at the Orlando Sentinel. follow on X@arelisrhdz

By Sarah CahlanSarah Cahlan is a video reporter and one of the founding members of the Visual Forensics team. Her work combines open source and forensic technologies with traditional journalism and documentary filmmaking. She shared in a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Jan. 6 insurrection and a Dupont for her coverage of the clearing of Lafayette Square.follow on X@SarahCahlan

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.

****

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.”