IN EAGLE PASS,
Life near militarized zone makes people uneasy
A century and a half ago, Confederate Gen. Joseph Orville Shelby splashed into the wild waters of the Rio Grande off this border city and fled to Mexico, refusing to surrender to Union soldiers.
Now the park named in his honor has become a front line in a feud between the state and the federal government — in a power struggle over who ultimately has the right to control the border and the tide of humanity trying to cross it.
Texas National Guard Humvees carry rifle-toting troops and patrol newly erected gates to the municipal park previously used for family cookouts and Independence Day festivities. Tents, military trucks, heavy equipment and portable toilets dot the edge of a browning fairway. Along the riverbank, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has ordered the state National Guard to deploy coils of razor wire, rusting shipping containers and dirt-filled barrels to declare his state’s sovereignty.
In a Shelby-like act of defiance, the governor is invoking the state’s right to defend itself against what he sees as an
invasion. Abbott made national headlines when he seized the park in Eagle Pass this month and shut out U.S. Border Patrol agents, who had long used the terrain as a staging point — an action the
governor’s supporters saw as a takecharge move and his detractors as a dangerous overreach of state power.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Abbott to allow Border Patrol agents to remove or cut wire to reach the river and aid migrants in distress. Abbott’s troops are installing even more wire. Twentyfive Republican governors recently signed a letter expressing their support for Abbott’s rebellion, and former President Donald Trump is calling on states to join the standoff.
The feud between Abbott and the Biden administration is heating up as the presidential election campaign is gaining momentum. The issue has galvanized Republicans, some of whom are now questioning the merits of a bipartisan border package tied to aid for Ukraine after Trump called it “meaningless.” President Joe Biden has been pushed to take a harsher stance on the migrant flow — declaring Friday that he’d “shut down” the southern border when illegal crossings surged.
“People now know where Eagle Pass is,” said Mike Garcia, a retired insurance salesman and Chamber of Commerce member. “But are we famous or infamous?”
Caught in the fray are the residents of Eagle Pass — originally known as El Paso del Águila, after the Mexican eagles that