Migrants en route to Texas encounter razor-wire fencing, set up by Texan authorities, resulting in the discovery of a lifeless body in recent weeks. The US Justice Department is suing Texas, citing violations of border treaties and urging the removal of barriers through diplomatic means.
With their two children on their shoulders, Wilfredo Riera and Nataly Barrionuevo wade into the Rio Grande from the Mexican shore, the water soon reaching their waists.
Avoiding the string of large orange buoys placed by Texas authorities to block their passage, they slog on toward the United States.
From their starting point at Piedras Negras in Mexico’s Coahuila state, they cross to Eagle Pass in south Texas, where that state’s governor, Greg Abbott, has deployed the military in an effort to stem the migrant flow.
The US military vehicle that had been guarding the area earlier has left.
The buoys extend for nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters). They are designed to spin if someone tries to climb onto them, and have sharp, serrated metal disks on either side. The lifeless body of one person was found caught in the buoys in recent weeks.
Riera, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, crosses the river with his family and more than a dozen other migrants, far from the buoys.
They had been warned about the buoys, he said, but were told “there was a way around them.”
The crossing takes about 10 minutes. Then the group encounters a seemingly endless barrier of razor-wire fencing.
Finding a weak spot, they clamber over.
‘War zone’
The US Justice Department has sued Texas seeking the removal of the buoys, saying they violate border treaties with Mexico and that the problem should be resolved through diplomacy.
A federal court is reviewing the case.
“Let me be clear,” Governor Abbott said Monday. “We are fully authorized by the Constitution of the United States of America to do exactly what we are doing. And that is to secure the border.”
Abbott, a Republican, blames the Biden administration for the country’s migrant problems.
Governors of several other conservative states have sent National Guard troops to help along the border.
Abbott “put up a nice little stage area here to make it look like a war zone,” said Jessie Fuentes, 62, owner of Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team in Eagle Pass.
The increasing militarization of the border, he said, had brought his business to a standstill.
‘Not how we treat people’
Robie Flores, 36, grew up in Eagle Pass. She has fond memories of picnics in riverfront Shelby Park, where people would sometimes shout friendly greetings to people on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande, in Piedras Negras.
All that has changed.
Texas first erected a barrier of shipping containers that does little to protect anyone, said Flores, a videographer and co-founder of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, which opposes border walls.
After the containers came the fencing and then the buoys.
“This isn’t what our community is,” Flores said. “And this isn’t how we treat people… migrants being herded like cattle.”
Katrine Dige Houmøller, with AFP
