EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Texas has wrestled away control of immigration enforcement from the federal government after stationing thousands of troops and installing miles of razor wire along the Rio Grande, members of several civil rights organizations said on Wednesday.
Those troops and barriers become a “gantlet” that prevents asylum-seekers from surrendering to the Border Patrol, say advocates who allege witnessing Texas National Guard members push migrants back toward Mexico, fire non-lethal projectiles or direct them to private land where they are charged with trespassing.
“We have treated people who sustained injuries from canisters (launched) by the National Guard, injuries from the concertina wire, injured by rubber bullets,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute in El Paso. “The U.S.-Mexico border is 2,000 miles long; more than 1,100 miles are in Texas. Texas has effectively taken control of immigration enforcement on more than 50 percent of the border. […] Twenty-year-olds with automatic weapons are now administering immigration law.”
The groups are calling on the federal government to “more aggressively” step in and assert its exclusive right to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. The Biden administration last year sued Texas over a 1,000-foot barrier of buoys placed in the Rio Grande south of Eagle Pass. A federal judge issued an injunction against the state, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals later vacated the order.
Other advocates participating in a Wednesday online seminar sponsored by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) also alleged Texas’ “militarization” of the border is pushing migrants to dangerous clandestine crossing points and that Department of Public Safety troopers participating in Operation Lone Star are not being held accountable for high-speed chases of vehicles that often result in deaths and injuries.
“Doctors we work with tell us (chases) is now the number one cause of casualties in El Paso. There is property damage in addition to loss of life. Last year seven people died and this year there have been serious injuries and some people have died,” Corbett said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started Operation Lone Star in 2021 frustrated with the federal government’s inability to reduce spikes in illegal migration. The state has spent $11 billion on the deployment of troops, extra officers and barriers, and the state will discuss an additional $3 billion for the next biennium when the Legislature meets next year.
Amerika Garcia Grewal of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition also said state police chases have resulted in fatalities in her part of the state. The dead include migrants and U.S. citizens, the activists said.
Border Report reached out to DPS and the Texas Military Department for comment and is awaiting a response. DPS several times this year has confirmed or informed the news media regarding vehicle crashes related to migrant smuggling. State and federal law enforcement agencies say smugglers instruct contract drivers to evade arrest by driving at high speeds.
South of El Paso, three Mexican transnational criminal organizations claim to control every inch of the border from Presidio, Texas, to Santa Teresa, New Mexico, for purposes of drug and migrant smuggling.
The activists said Texas’ soldiers and barriers are pushing migrants into the hands of those smugglers — who get them over the border wall in deserts, mountains and bodies of water that often claim their lives.
The El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol last fiscal year reported a record 149 encounters with deceased migrants. The fatalities spiked to 176 this year, according to Border Patrol, but the activists say the final toll was 180.
“We had spikes in deaths in terms of people trying to go around the concertina wire being pushed into the desert,” Corbett said.
He and Garcia-Grewal called for restrictions on DPS chases, saying the Border Patrol has cut back on chases of vehicles suspected of carrying migrants and that a supervisor is required to monitor authorized pursuits.
Immigration and criminal justice advocate Bob Libal of Human Rights Watch said the Texas-Mexico border is seeing an unprecedented surge in non-federal law enforcement deployed to contain migration. “Twelve states sent National Guard and non-law enforcement (including) game wardens and highway patrol,” he said.
Libal said Texas is using trespassing laws selectively for immigration enforcement. “If I was arrested for trespassing, I’d be out the next day. (Migrants) are spending up to a year in jail,” he said.
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