Spiked buoys and razor wire: Texas’s brutal defences against migration
A floating barrier on the Rio Grande has opened a new front in political battles over border control
In the small Texan border city of Eagle Pass, residents are so accustomed to desperate migrants accosting them in the streets and even in their own homes that they have taken security into their own hands.
“We were having a cookout at our house, and they just turned up,” said Diego Rodriguez, 18. The group demanded to be driven away from the border, he said. Now, he has a firearm with him at all times. “You always have to be carrying a gun. You don’t know what they’re going to do,” he added.
He blames Joe Biden for the massive increase in crossings – and hopes Donald Trump will soon replace him and fix the situation.
“Biden’s not really doing anything,” he said. “Donald Trump has better ideas. We didn’t have that many people coming in when he was in office and we didn’t have to carry a gun. It was safer. [Biden] is letting them come in.”
Perched on the edge of the Rio Grande, Eagle Pass has become the epicentre of a national debate over border security that hangs over November’s presidential election.
A total of 2,300 migrants were caught each day attempting to cross the river from Mexico in December, as the number crossing the border in total reached 250,000 – the largest influx in a single month in US history.
Dozens of migrants have drowned in the river while attempting to cross. State emergency services are at breaking point, and officers say they require therapy to deal with the trauma of pulling bodies from the Rio Grande for hours at a time. Last month, a Mexican woman and her children, eight and 10, were found dead in the river just metres from the border.
In a sign of how important the issue has become, yesterday, both Mr Biden and Mr Trump visited the southern US border to push their competing visions for how to solve the problem. The president was in Brownsville, while the Republican frontrunner went to Eagle Pass to visit Shelby Park, a public park that is now a military installation.
Troops in US Army uniforms, carrying semi-automatic rifles, patrol its perimeter and operate a checkpoint for traffic. Beyond the line of soldiers, away from public view, the banks of the river have been lined with shipping containers topped with razor wire. Five years ago, Shelby Park was an unremarkable space used by children’s football teams and a travelling carnival. Now, it looks like a scene from a warzone.
It is part of an all-out effort by the state to stem the flow of migrants. Greg Abbott, Texas’s strident Republican governor, has warned that they present an unprecedented threat to the state’s residents. In January, he declared Eagle Pass’s 28,500 residents were under threat from an “invasion” and invoked Texas’s constitutional right to protect itself.
Many of those crossing have travelled thousands of miles from South America, through the murderous Darien Gap, to start a new life in the US. Some have legitimate asylum claims, but many do not.
Mr Abbott has ramped up Operation Lone Star, his anti-migrant initiative launched in March 2021, with extreme measures to fortify the river against the flow of migrants. Shelby Park, where thousands of migrants had arrived each day, was seized from the federal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, and placed under the custody of the state’s National Guard.
Under the latest measures, the river has been blocked by a floating barrier of spiked buoys, anchored to the riverbed, while eight miles of razor wire has been installed on the US bank. An island has been cleared of brush by the Texas National Guard to make it easier to spot attempted crossings, while regular bus services have been organised to take successful migrants to cities run by Democrat politicians.
More is planned. This week, Mr Abbott promised to install a military base to house 2,300 national guardsmen in the town, while a local hotel, the Comfort Inn, is being used to house troops deployed from Florida with the blessing of Ron Desantis, the state’s governor.
The data show the measures appear to be working. Last month, the number of migrants crossing at Eagle Pass was down by a few hundred a day and the CBP says the hotspot for undocumented arrivals are now to be found in desert areas of the border in other US states.
“We still get them,” says a National Guard soldier, who spoke to The Telegraph from behind the metal bars of a five-metre Shelby Park fence. “They’re coming every day, but in smaller numbers than before.”
In the city, locals say the number of migrants wandering onto the streets has noticeably reduced. Juan Alvila, 29, lives close to the river and once found 15 migrants sheltering from border control officers behind his home.
Last year, his brother’s girlfriend stopped her car outside their home and several migrants climbed inside. “She had the doors unlocked, so they all climbed in, and that’s when my brother got mad,” he said. “She called my brother and he walked out, in his underwear, with a f---ing AR-15 [assault rifle]. Now, it’s a little bit more controlled, for sure.”
Despite the recent decline in numbers, Eagle Pass has become a national talking point. The federal Department of Homeland Security says the dip in figures is because of an increase in patrols on the Mexican side of the border and a crackdown on cartel operations, not Mr Abbott’s border measures.
Democrats accuse the governor of political posturing, and Mr Biden has said the Texas governor’s measures on the border violate the federal government’s exclusive right to enforce border security. In response, Mr Abbott and other Republicans say the president has failed to fulfil his constitutional duty to protect the US’S southern frontier, and have called for the resignation of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary.
In January, the US Supreme Court ruled that Border Security agents could cut the razor wire installed by the National Guard if it interferes with their duties, while an appeal court ordered Mr Abbott to move his floating border barrier. On Thursday, a court upheld the Biden administration’s challenge to a proposed law in Texas, due to take effect on March 5, that would allow police to arrest suspected illegal migrants.
Mr Trump and his party hope that the border row will overshadow Mr Biden’s re-election effort this autumn, and have moved to block his proposals to increase funding and staffing in southern states. The former president has promised to resurrect his ill-fated “border wall” and threatened to close down some legal border crossings.
For now, migrants continue to flow across the river at Eagle Pass and elsewhere on the 2,000-mile border. “It’s been pretty slow today,” said a US Army soldier at Shelby Park’s border fence. “But they’ll be back tomorrow.”
‘You always have to be carrying a gun. You don’t know what they’re going to do’