He governor of texas announced that the state will install a barrier made of buoys along a section of the Rio Grande, where people often walk or swim across the dangerous river from Mexico seeking refuge in the United States, as the state allocates $5.1 billion to step up plans to thwart border crossings.
Greg Abbott He said a “new buoy water barrier” will be placed in the river. At a press conference, she showed a line of large red buoys floating in the center of the Rio Grande.
Installation of the buoys would begin “virtually immediately,” according to Abbott, in what is the latest step in the Republican campaign against immigration.
Republican governors of 14 states have already said they will send thousands of National Guard troops and other personnel to the Texas-Mexico border, in an orchestrated effort that immigration advocates said would “put migrants’ lives at risk.” .
Abbott said the huge buoys, which are four to six feet tall, “will allow us to prevent people from even reaching the border.”
“We can put miles and miles of these buoys” in different areas, Abbott said. According to officials, there will be netting under the buoys to prevent people from swimming under them, and the buoys will deploy “virtually immediately.”
Rodolfo Rosales, Texas state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, condemned Abbott’s plan.
“We see it as a chilling reminder of the extreme measures used throughout history by elected leaders against those whom they do not consider human beings, seeking to exterminate them regardless of the means employed,” Rosales told CBS News.
“It is with profound horror and shame that we witness the consideration of these measures, which are evidently intended as political theater, but will undoubtedly result in the loss of innocent life among refugees seeking asylum in the United States,” he told the television network.
The buoy plan was announced as Abbott signed into law six immigration laws as part of a $5.1 billion package passed by the Texas legislature.
The buoys will first be deployed in Eagle Pass, Texas, officials said. That part of the Rio Grande is already dangerous: Last September, a local fire chief told The Guardian that around 30 bodies a month were being recovered from the river.
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt, in fact, we want to keep people from getting hurt, from drowning,” Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at Thursday’s news conference.
A board next to McCraw and Abbott showed an aerial photo of the buoys deployed in a narrow stretch of the river. Another board displayed various photos of people apparently trying to get through the buoy barrier.
“The governor was also concerned about the loss of life — would this pose a risk to migrants trying to cross, family units, in that sense?” McCraw said.
“And the answer is that every time they go into the water, it is a risk for the migrants. This is to discourage them from even entering the water.”
McCraw added: “This has been tested multiple times in various ways by special operators, tactical operators, border control specialists and because of the water and the buoyancy of these buoys, it’s very difficult to get through, it’s very difficult to go over them.”
States including Florida, Arkansas, South Dakota and Tennessee have said they will send troops to Texas in an apparent effort to curb irregular immigration.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who has made immigration a key part of his fledgling presidential campaign, has assigned 1,100 national guard officers and others, the most of any state.
“Unfortunately, both Governors DeSantis and Abbott have used intimidation tools in many different ways in recent years and have put migrant lives at risk by doing so for political points,” said Hanne Sandison, director of the refugee program and immigrants from the non-profit organization Advocates for Human Rights, to The Guardian.
Immigration advocates have long argued that it is the denial of migrants’ rights to seek asylum that forces them to take a number of more dangerous steps.
More information: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/09/texas-abbott-immigration-buoy-border-crossings-rio-grande-mexico