The Department of Justice has weighed in on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s deadly border trap targeting migrants crossing the Rio Grande. In a Thursday letter to Abbott, the DOJ warned the state that it would be filing legal action to force Texas to remove the mid-river buoys wrapped in razor wire. While the department did not come right out and accuse Abbott and his fellow Republicans of being murderous, criminal monsters, it sure hinted at it.
“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” the letter stated, citing a clause in the law that “prohibits the creation of any obstruction to the navigable capacity of waters of the United States, and further prohibits building any structure in such waters without authorization from the United States Army Corps of Engineers (“Corps”),” says the letter, which was obtained by CNN.
At issue is the design of the Republican-pushed border obstruction, which seems plainly intended to cause death.
A line of razor wire-wrapped buoys has been floated in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, a current hotspot for asylum-seekers seeking to cross the border to U.S. soil. Migrants who attempt to swim under the buoys may find themselves snagged on underwater netting anchored to the riverbed. Miles of razor wire have also been installed on the riverbank, “deterring” migrants from crossing but also blocking rescuers from reaching migrants injured by the river and its new traps.
The Justice Department issued its threat after two stories in the Houston Chronicle revealed claims that troopers were being ordered to “push small children” attempting to cross the river “back into the Rio Grande” and that Texas officials had installed razor wire blocking federal Border Patrol agents from parts of a site housing a makeshift riverside migrant processing center.
So yes: The Texas government’s border trap would appear to be illegal in an entire array of ways. It violates a U.S.-Mexico treaty forbidding such constructions. It violates federal law by blocking a navigable river and by not receiving authorization from the Army Corps of Engineers for the plan. Submerged razor wire and razor wire that is now concealed by plants growing along the riverbank pose a deadly danger to federal agents patrolling the border and to agents and emergency responders attempting lifesaving rescues. The wire has blocked the Border Patrol from accessing many parts of the river at all. The wire poses an even greater risk to the public and the environment if, as is inevitable, flooding dislodges large segments of wire and sends it tumbling downriver to rest in tangles at the bottom of the river or in large snags on the shoreline.
And all of that is aside from the main issue, which is that the Texas government has installed miles of traps clearly intended to maim or kill migrants who risk crossing them. An unclimbable wall is one thing; tangles of razor wire installed to snag flesh and clothes on the surface or banks of a flowing river are certain to cause drownings, and there’s no plausible argument to the contrary.
Texas Republicans may currently be swept up in one of their perennial orgies of xenophobic hysteria, but there are no situations in which it is considered acceptable to murder asylum-seekers simply because you don’t want to deal with the paperwork to process them. It’s a criminal act familiar to authoritarian or fascist states and considered a horrific crime everywhere else.
It’s a shame that we will likely never see Texas state officials prosecuted and jailed for acts of negligent homicide, or for the injuries to migrants that are already escalating after installation of the wire. That is what should happen. Filing suit to have the wire removed should be the first federal action, but certainly not the last.
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