With their two children on their shoulders, Wilfredo and Nataly jump into the Rio Grande from the Mexican shore. The water reaches their waist. They avoid the line of buoys that the state of Texas placed to block their passage and head towards the United States.
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They cross from Piedras Negras, in the state of Coahuila, and seek the opposite shore at Eagle Pass, a city in southern Texas whose governor, Republican Greg Abbott, has militarized to contain the entry of migrants.
In Texas, the Rio Grande or Rio Grande is the natural border with Mexico. It’s Friday, it’s two in the afternoon, the wind chill is over 40 ºC and the military vehicle that guarded the area earlier is no longer there. The orange buoys extend for about 300 meters.
They are designed to spin if someone tries to grab hold of them, and on each side are serrated metal disks. In recent weeks, two bodies have been found in the sector. The family of Wilfredo Riera, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, crosses the river with more than a dozen migrants, far from the buoys.
“They told us [de las boyas] but they told us that it did not mark the entire territory, that there was a way to access it,” he says. It takes them about ten minutes to go from one shore to the other. Then they run into an endless barrage of razor-sharp barbed wire. They find a vulnerable spot and pass.
“We want to surrender”
“We want to give ourselves up,” says Wilfredo. But there are no guards yet. You can only hear the slight squeak of the lizards hidden among the riverside vegetation. A hot wind blows. In front of them, there is still a fence about three meters high, also with barbed wire, which the migrants cover with their clothes to be able to cross to the other side.
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Perched on the fence, Nataly Barrionuevo, 39, waits for her husband Wilfredo to catch up with their children. Yeiden, two years old, and Nicolás, 7. Some end up with their pants torn by wires, but they are already in the United States. Nataly, Ecuadorian, lived with Wilfredo and his children in Ecuador. They left there a month and a half ago, in search of work and better living conditions, and on their way they crossed the Darien jungle, from Colombia to Panama.
A border police van pulls up, kicking up dust. In Spanish, an officer asks them to show their documents. They search only the men and place everyone in a vehicle, heading to a detention center.
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There they will assess whether it is feasible to process your asylum request. If so, they will temporarily enter the country, until a judge sees their case. If not, they will be deported. “We want to work, to make a future for them,” says Nataly, as he points to his little ones, before his voice cracks.
“War zone”
By jumping over the fence, the migrants fall into Heavenly Farms, the private property of the Urbina husband and wife, pecan farmers. Their territory has direct access to the river, where the buoys now float, and is completely fenced off and guarded by the Texas military.
Although they don’t like it, they have no choice but to accept, confesses Magali Urbina, 52. “My husband and I don’t believe in open borders. But we also don’t believe we should treat people inhumanely,” she says.
“We wish the federal government would do more so that this doesn’t happen (…) When you see someone crossing you don’t say, wait, you can’t be here. That’s not our first human instinct,” he says.
The US Department of Justice sued Texas to remove the buoys. He considers them a humanitarian problem and also a diplomatic one, because it goes against border treaties with Mexico. In fact, Texas had to rearrange them last week, because they were invading the Mexican side. The case is already reviewed by a federal court.
“We are authorized to do what we are doing, protect the border,” said Abbott, who blames the Joe Biden administration for the immigration crisis in the country. Governors of other conservative states, who consider this part of Texas a “war zone,” have sent troops to support him. Abbott “has created a setting here to make it look like a war zone,” says Jessie Fuentes, 62, owner of Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team, which offered tours on the river. “I have had to close, nobody wants to enter the river like this (…) I ask for respect for humanity and for the river,” she adds.
AFP
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