TROUBLING ECHOES OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
As thousands of migrants overwhelm a small Texas town, an extraordinary armed stand-off has developed between the government’s Border Patrol and local forces who don’t trust Biden’s White House to keep out the incoming masses...
Clutching assault rifles, and surrounded by humvee armoured cars and state police, a group of national guardsmen in full combat gear stand menacingly next to a gate under a 20ft-high reinforced steel fence.
given the endless strife along America’s southern frontier a few hundred yards away, it’s not an unexpected sight in this roughand-ready border town.
But these troops are not facing Mexico. instead, they’re staring back towards the texan town of Eagle Pass — and the rest of America.
For this particular display of military muscle isn’t meant to send a signal to the hordes of asylum seekers pouring into the country week after week. instead, it’s to stop the federal law-enforcement agents of the Biden administration from coming anywhere near.
in an extraordinary development that illustrates both the ferocious political polarisation of the u.S. and the growing rancour surrounding America’s immigration crisis, an armed stand- off between the texas national guard and the u.S. Border Patrol has developed in this proudly independent corner of the country.
the remarkable scenes that the Mail witnessed stem from a highly provocative decision this month by texas’s Republican governor, greg Abbott, to order armed troops and police to take control of Eagle
Guardsmen laid three rows of wickedlooking razor wire
Pass’s 47-acre Shelby Park — a critical entry point for undocumented migrants — and freeze out the Border Patrol. Since Biden was elected, Abbott has lambasted the Democrats for doing much to encourage the migration crisis.
During his election campaign, the President vowed to ‘restore [America’s] moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers’: music to the ears of left-wing voters and, fatally, would-be immigrants, too.
Rather than sneak into the u.S. and go into hiding, most migrants know that the first thing they need to do is find a Border Patrolman and request asylum.
they will then be swiftly processed and released into the care of a non-governmental organisation. they can legally remain and work in the u. S. until their application is decided — a process that often takes years.
As the floodgates opened, Eagle Pass, a small town with a population of just 28,000 people, became a focal point for the migrant influx.
in the week before christmas alone, the local Border Patrol apprehended more than 22,000 undocumented migrants, most from latin America.
Many were held in a field in Shelby Park, overwhelming local police, fire and ambulance services. the already cash-strapped town lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in income when one of the two economically crucial bridges into Mexico was closed to free up more border agents.
A few months earlier, Abbott had ordered a 1,000-ft string of buoys, separated by serrated metal plates akin to circular saw blades and supporting a submerged mesh net, to be installed near Eagle Pass in the Rio grande, the river that marks the border between texas and Mexico. the move sparked outrage from the Mexican government and human rights groups.
then, just over two weeks ago, Abbott took what many regarded as the nuclear option and decided to enforce his views down the barrel of a gun.
national guardsmen occupied
Shelby Park overnight and — against the wishes of the town, which owns the park — started strengthening fortifications against both migrants and federal agents.
Announcing that it was taking over the park indefinitely both to stop asylum seekers entering and to block ‘ organisations that perpetuate illegal immigrant crossings’, the texas Military Department left little doubt that it meant the hapless agencies of the Biden administration.
As commander-in- chief of the 18,000-strong texas Army national guard — and, in emergencies, of its state police — Abbott has been able to flood the park’s 2.5-mile stretch along the river with manpower and hardware such as searchlights and cameras.
he has barred entry by Border Patrol officers despite the federal agency being tasked with policing the border. it once used the park as a key migrant holding area.
the park has been closed to everyone else except, bizarrely, members of its golf course, who are still allowed to play.
More than 150 years ago, a dispute over slavery between southern states and the federal government eventually turned into the horrific American civil War, which lasted for four years and saw at least 620,000 soldiers killed.
in that conflict, texas sided with the confederate rebels against Washington. And although the current stand- off has yet to boil over into violence, some say Abbott — who shares those civil War confederates’ obsession with states’ rights — is playing with fire.
last week, the Mail gained permission to enter the park and was given a guided tour by the texas national guard, which showed off its fearsome river defences. A wall of shipping containers is already in place but the concertina wire on top of them is easily overcome by migrants, i was told. So guardsmen are now replacing this with three rows of even more wicked- looking razor wire.
the work continued apace despite a Supreme court ruling only the previous day that Border Patrol agents could cut the wire down on the grounds it endangers safety and hampers efforts to rescue migrants struggling in the river.
Meanwhile, national guard and state police in dinghies and fandriven air boats — reinforced by Florida police units lent by governor Ron DeSantis, of one mind with Abbott on immigration — are patrolling the Rio grande.
they and their colleagues on shore provide a less-than-affable welcome to asylum seekers.
Although state police currently arrest adults for trespass — families are spared as the children cannot be arrested — they still have to hand them to Border Patrol agents.
however, Abbott has just passed controversial legislation making illegally crossing the border a state crime punishable by up to six months in jail. the law allows a
Troops were accused of letting migrants drown
judge to drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico.
Outraged Democrats say the new law is unconstitutional because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. So another court battle looms — but the governor and his supporters are undeterred.
‘We want migrants to seek asylum but we want them to do this legally and safely,’ a national guard sergeant told me.
the alarming developments in texas have provided an object lesson to other countries, including Britain, in how local politicians at the sharp end of a rocketing migration crisis can lose patience with a central government that seems indifferent.
the illegal migration problem in America dwarfs Britain’s: while nearly 30,000 migrants crossed the English channel in 2023 (although many hundreds of thousands legally arrived), u.S. federal border agents recorded 302,000 encounters with migrants along the Mexican border in December alone.
the total during the entire Biden presidency sits at more than eight million, although the figure includes people apprehended more than once. Republicans have
demanded a higher bar for migrants claiming asylum, and for the process to be changed so that applicants can be rejected before they have settled into life in America.
Eagle Pass has historically been a mecca for migrants for two main reasons: it is close to the terminus of a major Mexican rail route (large groups of migrants hitch a ride on freight trains); and the Rio Grande, with the Mexican state of Coahuila on its other side, is usually no more than waist-high here.
The river may be shallow but it is treacherous, with strong currents that have frequently caused migrants to drown. The Eagle Pass fire chief estimates that 30 bodies are removed from the river every month.
It is now pot luck for migrants
who do try to cross as to whether they run into federal Border Patrol or the Texas units, who wear similar uniforms and ride around in similar boats.
Even though the influx has dwindled in recent weeks, I watched as a family of three — the father holding a young child on his shoulders — waded out into the 328ft-wide Rio Grande, from the public park that runs along the river in neighbouring Piedras Negras.
Two National Guard motorboats zoomed over to intercept them and, after a short exchange in which they were told to go back, they reluctantly returned to shore — no doubt to try again.
A couple of miles outside of town, we found a group of some 50 migrants being led on to buses by the Border Patrol, leaving a
mountain of wet clothing, shoes and teddy bears discarded after crossing the river.
Greeting asylum seekers with guns, armoured cars and razor wire is the sort of hard-boiled Texan behaviour that Davy Crockett and his comrades — who, almost 200 years ago, defended the Alamo from the Mexican Army 140 miles further north — would doubtless have cheered.
Indeed, Abbott has dubbed his anti-immigrant drive, launched in 2021, Operation Lone Star, in tribute to his state’s nickname and its go-it-alone spirit.
Earlier this month, senior Border Patrol officers accused the Texas National Guard of allowing three migrants — a woman and two children — to drown after they refused to allow federal agents to
enter Shelby Park to launch a rescue boat.
Border Patrol chiefs later admitted the trio had actually already died by the time they received a distress call from Mexico — but insisted that the Texan troops had stopped federal agents from reaching two other migrants who were struggling in the river.
They were rescued by a Mexican boat and were found to be suffering from hypothermia.
Biden’s officials also complain that migrants are being injured by the Texan razor wire.
Some warn that, given Texas cannot legally block federal authorities in this way, unless Abbott backs down, a showdown is inevitable.
‘ We’re talking about an international border — and federal law enforcement is supposed to have access to it,’ said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
‘ This creates a potentially dangerous situation where the Border Patrol is facing off against armed National Guard troops, and if someone does something stupid, there could be an unfortunate confrontation.’
Texas academic Steve Vladeck said the stand- off should ‘ scare the bejesus out of us’, describing it as the most serious skirmish between a state and federal government since the battle over racial desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s.
Abbott has blamed Biden and his ‘reckless open-border policies’, and has accused the President of ‘destroying America’. The President’s ‘deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself’, he said.
The White House counters that Abbott is ‘politicising the border’, ‘demonising and dehumanising’ migrants, and making it ‘ harder and more dangerous for Border Patrol to do their jobs’.
For the moment, the Biden administration is trying to use the courts to thwart Abbott’s flagrant challenge to its authority.
Democrats have dismissed the park ‘ occupation’ as an extreme political stunt from a Republican who loves to rile his opponents: he’s previously caused outrage by laying on free buses and flights to ferry tens of thousands of migrants to Democrat-run, more migrantfriendly cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
However, Americans of all political stripes increasingly accept that the country is facing
‘Every house has a fence. The U.S. is no different’
an immigration crisis that looks set to become the biggest issue of this year’s presidential election.
Caught in the middle are the people of Eagle Pass, a Democrat town where 95 per cent of the inhabitants are Hispanic.
Their main gripe is that, with one of the bridges closed, it now takes them at least four hours to get back into the U.S. from a quick trip over the river to Mexico.
University student Alison Ortiz, 23, complained that many of the older townsfolk want to ‘live in a bubble’ and, despite being migrants themselves, want to limit new arrivals. ‘Even people just ten years older than me support what Abbott’s done,’ she said.
A 62-year- old shop owner just 200 yards from Shelby Park — who wouldn’t give his name for fear of sounding like a Republican in a Democrat town — said: ‘Every house has a fence to keep out the people who want to force their way in. America is no different. It took my parents three years to move here legally from Mexico and that’s how other people should come in.’
As his approval ratings over immigration plunge, even Biden has finally acknowledged the nightmare at the border. This month he said he was open to ‘massive change’ in border policy. Asked if the border was secure, he said: ‘No, it’s not.’
But can he act in time to prevent a Trump election victory?
If the man who pledged to build a ‘beautiful wall’ along the entire 2,000-mile frontier, and who calls the border surge an ‘invasion’, gets back into power, the dust-up in Eagle Pass may be the least of any migrant’s problems.