San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
History shows barriers will fall
In Eagle Pass, Gov. Greg Abbott’s border buoy barricade looks like a massive wound on the Rio Grande.
It’s reddish, bumpy and inflammatory. As crews labor to install the chain of 4-foot-tall floats in murky water amid triple-digit heat, groups of migrants, some with kids, make their way past the workers and try to navigate barbed wire that lines the Texas side of the river. Department of Public Safety troopers, journalists and cameras look on.
The 1,000-foot-long barrier, costing taxpayers at least $1 million, will do little to stem the steady flow of people seeking better lives in America, but it has brought attention to the southern border. Perhaps that’s the point.
Like other state-led border initiatives over the last couple years — deploying troops, enlisting other state’s guard forces, busing immigrants to blue cities and relentless fearmongering about an “invasion” — the buoys are meant for Republican voters hundreds, even thousands, of miles from the Rio Grande.
The buoys are the latest attention grabbing-ploy in a dangerous game that’s already cost an untold number of American and migrant lives.
The bright buoys make for
powerful visuals, especially when desperate people are seen risking their lives crossing the river in the background. Combine that human struggle with troopers and guardsmen in tactical gear, military vehicles and observation posts. Throw in a menagerie of barbed wire, shipping containers and other makeshift barriers. Top it off with a lawsuit from a kayaking outfit, and it’s hard to turn away from the spectacle that recalls some sort of distant war zone.
Texas has leaned into the militaristic narrative. Apparently, fear garners more political points than humanity, but
history shows that, ultimately, it’s a failing strategy.
Operation Lone Star officials talk big about thousands of immigrant apprehensions, criminal arrests and fentanyl seizures, but there’s little mention of lives saved or people helped.
State public relations staffers should advocate for recasting Operation Lone Star as a humanitarian effort in collaboration with the Border Patrol rather than a unilateral security operation. But humanitarian aid and helping families go against the larger dehumanizing narrative of an “invasion” and the notion that the federal
government isn’t doing its job. To cast Operation Lone Star as a humanitarian mission would also demonstrate the need for comprehensive reform. These are people.
The buoy barricade comes as razor wire emplaced by Operation Lone Star is hindering the Border Patrol from doing its job.
Like the barbed wire, the buoys weren’t fully coordinated with the various entities they will impact.
The decision to install the buoys “surprised” the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, the agency that oversees water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico.
Crews have bulldozed areas along the river to aid in the barrier construction, and the installation has temporarily blocked access to a public boat ramp.
The failures to coordinate exemplify Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ statement during an August visit with the Express-News. He said state resources are “tremendous assistance” when coordinated, but the state can also “wreak havoc” when acting unilaterally without communication.
And there’s been little discussion of long-term environmental impacts of the buoys, barbed wire and other barricades.
Texas’ haphazard militarization of the southern border challenges our national values. Throughout history, great walls and barriers eventually crumble.
And barricades and weaponry underestimate people’s will, courage and ingenuity. Look at the countless people who survived crossings of the most militarized borders in the world — North Korea, East Germany and Berlin, among them.
There are smarter ways than brute force to balance the need for a secure border with the humanitarian crisis. America is better than barbed wire and buoys.
Eventually, the wound of the buoys will scar. Someday people or floodwaters will remove the buoys and the barbed wire.
Until then — or until legal intervention — the buoys will remain in the Rio Grande, a testament to failed policy, political games and cruelty.