McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — A grassroots organization that advocates for asylum rights and has held several events in the Rio Grande Valley is taking its efforts northwest to Eagle Pass, Texas, where it plans to hold a multi-day vigil.
Witness at the Border plans to be in Eagle Pass from April 10-24, and hopes to enter Shelby Park — the area that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star troops have forbidden entry to U.S. Border Patrol agents, organizers say.
“What we plan to do is do what we can to see what’s going on and to hopefully get seen. The reason we’re going to Eagle Pass is because that’s kind of where Abbott is setting the stage for this confrontation with federal immigration,” Witness at the Border Founder Joshua Rubin told Border Report on Wednesday.
Rubin lives in New York but began coming to Brownsville, Texas, in 2019 during the Trump administration when the “Remain in Mexico” program, formerly the Migrant Protection Protocols, was in effect that turned away asylum-seekers and made them wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration hearings.
Joshua Rubin, founder of Witness at the Border, is seen picketing on Jan. 17, 2020, near the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, for the right for asylum seekers to cross into the United States. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)
Members of Witness at the Border live across the country and come to the border to participate in various events every few years.
Rubin and several others held a vigil for weeks across from the Gateway International Bridge, which leads from Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. They had planned to remain there longer but the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Title 42 was enacted, and border crossings were greatly reduced to stop the spread of the virus.
In December 2022, the group launched a two-week long “Journey for Justice” border tour that left from the Gulf of Mexico and caravanned the length of the Southwest border to San Diego, stopping along the way in Uvalde, El Paso, Eagle Pass, and other border cities.
In January, they held a five-day conference in the small town of Ajo, Arizona, north of the border city of Lukeville, Arizona, which according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the busiest crossing point from Mexico for migrants so far this fiscal year.
CBP reports there have been over 250,000 migrants encountered in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which includes Lukeville, so far in Fiscal Year 2024, which began in October. That included 80,184 in December — far more than any other sector.
It was in Ajo that members decided their next project should focus on Eagle Pass.
“At the end of the conference, that mother and two children had just drowned in Eagle Pass, so when we talked about what we’re going to do next, everybody said Eagle Pass,” Rubin said.
In January, a mother and her two young children drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico, into Eagle Pass. Border Patrol agents had been denied entry into Shelby Park, where agents launch boats to help migrant rescues.
State officials have said they did nothing wrong and are defending the Texas borders, which they say the Biden administration is failing to do.
The state even has deployed a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys in the middle of the Rio Grande at a cost of $1 million, which the federal government has challenged violates federal maritime laws.
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 floating barrier is being deployed in an effort to block migrants from entering Texas from Mexico. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Last month, Abbott announced that the Texas National Guard is building a base in Eagle Pass to hold at least 1,800 troops. — a clear sign that he plans to keep Operation Lone Star forces focused on the region for quite some time.
“What’s making this place interesting, in the immigration world, really, is that Abbott chose it,” Rubin said. “So that’s why we’re working on a vigil down there.”
More information on the group’s plans can be found here.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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