Breaking: Dead person found in Texas’ anti-migrant buoys that Mexico and DoJ want removed
11.11pm San Antonio
A dead person was found Wednesday stuck to the buoys Texas officials installed at the Mexican border and which are the heart of a Justice Department lawsuit that seeks to have them removed.
Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena said in a press release that officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety alerted the Mexican Consulate in Eagle Pass that a person was found deceased. The cause of death and nationality of the person are not known publicly, the release noted. It's one thing for politicians in faraway cities to discuss border security, but for people in a town like Eagle Pass, floating barriers, walls of shopping container and miles of concertina wire have a very real impact day-to-day.
Bárcena went on to sharply criticize the buoys, saying they violate Mexico’s “sovereignty” and that people in her country are “worried over the impact on human rights and the safety of migrants,” the release said in Spanish.
A spokesperson for DPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday night.
Last March 2023, two of the four Americans kidnapped in Mexico have been found dead, while the other two have been found alive but wounded, according to Mexican President AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador)
DPS officials announced the buoys in June — a measure that’s part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative — and began installing them along the Rio Grande in the Eagle Pass region in early July.
But a few weeks later, the federal Justice Department sued Abbott over the buoys, accusing the three-term Republican governor of violating federal law and ignoring requests from the government to have the buoys inspected.
Abbott continues defending the floating barrier installation and says he’s protecting Texas’ borders by deterring migrants from crossing illegally. A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday.
Mexican officials are doing everything they can to take control of the Rio Grande River away from Texas. The country has filed formal protests at the highest diplomatic levels and canceled a previously scheduled meeting about other matters because of the presence of the buoy barrier in the river. Mexico says it violates treaties between the U.S. and Mexico.
There are new filings in the DOJ’s lawsuit against Governor Greg Abbott. DOJ is kowtowing to Mexican demands that the buoy barrier be removed. DOJ should be demanding that Mexican officials stop their citizens and others who cross the river from the Mexican border but that would be assuming that Mexico was an honest broker and is working with the United States to secure the southern border. Mexico is not. And, the Biden administration has no desire to close the border.
On Wednesday, tensions were high over the buoy barrier during a meeting in Ciudad Juarez that was supposed to highlight U.S.-Mexico cooperation on other issues.
Why is Mexico allowed to make demands about the Rio Grande River and how Texas controls its side of the border? Joe Biden is willfully negligent and Democrats don’t care. The Biden administration picks winners and losers. In this case, DOJ chose to side with Mexico against a governor of a red state.
The reported death is the first publicly known instance of the buoys being connected to a fatality.
Democratic lawmakers have called the barriers “death traps.”
At a press conference in June announcing the barriers — which are strung together and each measure 4-feet in diameter — Abbott said the goal was to stop migrants from considering crossing the Rio Grande when they come across the floating barrier.
DPS Director Col. Steve McCraw said at the same press conference that they did not want people getting hurt from the buoys.
Stuck between the two sides in the debate is Eagle Pass, a small town of about 30,000 that sits across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Piedras Negras.
Here, authorities have taken over one of the city's main parks, built makeshift walls out of shipping containers and unveiled a controversial string of buoys in the river to deter migrants - a move that has already prompted local and federal lawsuits and a diplomatic complaint from Mexico.
Critics of the buoys have characterised them as a political stunt that is unlikely to have any significant impact on the flow of migrants. In recent days, several groups of migrants have reportedly crossed the river in the vicinity of the barrier.
"They've turned Eagle Pass into a war zone," Jessie Fuentes, the owner of a local kayak company that has sued Texas' government over the buoys.
"I feel like I'm in a turf war between the federal and state government, and in the middle is our community," he added.
Mr Fuentes, a retired educator, is among the Eagle Pass residents who say that their lives have been upended by Operation Lone Star. In his case, the border buoys dashed his dream of supplementing his pension by leading kayak tours of the Rio Grande.
"My goal in life was to relax on that river and show people how beautiful it is," he said. "But that got blown to heck. To me, it's not political. It's the other P - it's personal. I cried when I saw those barriers."
Nowhere in Eagle Pass is Operation Lone Star's disruption as visible as Heavenly Farms, the Urbina family's sprawling 300 acre (121 hectare) pecan farm on the outskirts of Eagle Pass near the river buoys.
Eagle Pass has traditionally had a close relationship with Border Patrol. Many residents - from across the political spectrum - say they favour a strong border, even if they disagree with the tactics and strategy of Governor Abbott.
"There's a lot of different reactions within the community, because of all the [migrants] that have been out there in the streets or released," said Pepe Aranda, a two-term former Eagle Pass mayor who now runs a real estate brokerage. "It's pretty split right now".
Others note that while Operation Lone Star has disrupted some lives in town, it has also brought with it a boon to some parts of the local economy.
"It's the part nobody wants to say out loud," said one local businessman, who asked not to be named. "There's so much money involved in this."
Local hotels, for example, are filled with National Guardsman and out-of-town state troopers, and restaurants in town see a steady stream of uniformed personnel.
"Complicated, I'd say, is the best word to describe what's happening," said Elias Diaz, a member of the Eagle Pass city council. "This is a town that lacks a lot of infrastructure… a lot of people are living in poverty."
"We do see a lot of money being pumped into the operation. Some of it gets people jobs and keeps hotels full," Mr Diaz added. "But at the same time, it's done nothing other than to create chaos to try to curb immigration patterns."
Governor Abbott and Texas officials have repeatedly shrugged off criticism of Operation Lone Star. They have refuted claims that migrants are being mistreated and vowed to fight any legal challenges to its authority in court.
The federal government, for its part, has already filed one legal challenge over the river buoys, and is reportedly looking into reports of migrants being mistreated.
On the ground in Eagle Pass, some said they fear their voices will be lost amid the wider debate between politicians far from the border.
"Talk to us," Mr Fuentes pleaded. "Don't come and build walls or barriers without really knowing our area. Don't disrespect us."
Mexican officials have sharply criticized Abbott’s border efforts, known as Operation Lone Star. His two-year operation has cost close to $10 billion.
In June, Bárcena sent a diplomatic note to U.S. officials asserting that razor wire along the Texas border and the buoys violate two treaties both countries signed in 1944 and 1970.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called the state’s tactics to deter migrants “inhumane” and said he would not meet with Abbott. In Mexico side, today the military has been empowered so much and has so much presence that it can exert control over AMLO. So today is radical or extreme heinous Texas under Governor Abbott mee radical AMLO in Mexico side. Using U.S. military force in Mexico to combat the drug cartels was once considered a fringe idea. But it’s getting more mainstream by the week. That’s concerning because the idea itself is idiotic, ineffective and counterproductive for a whole host of reasons. Would consider friendly in the grand scheme, yes (less under AMLO). More important in an anarchic system is that Mexico doesn’t have the military capacity to challenge the U.S. territorially even if it wanted to (not suggesting it does).
The Justice Department in its lawsuit wants a judge to force Texas to remove the buoys from the Rio Grande and to refrain from installing any structures in the river without permits from the federal government.
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