Tensions between Joe Biden's Government and Texas due to the immigration crisis are increasing. Federal and local authorities continue their dispute over surveillance of the border with Mexico. The pulse between the two has recently become more acute, days after three Mexican migrants – a young mother and her two children, aged eight and ten – drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to reach the United States. The back-and-forth between the parties has made it clear that the fight has made one of the most dangerous routes for international immigration even more lethal.
On Monday night, the Biden Government asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the lawsuit that Washington is holding against Texas for surveillance of the border with Mexico. In their request, the federal authorities explain that last Friday, January 12, around 9:00 p.m. (local time), the Government of Mexico informed the Border Patrol that two Mexican migrants were in trouble near a boat ramp on the US side of the border. river. The discovery was in Shelby Park, an area of Eagle Pass County, which has become the epicenter of an immigration crisis that represents a threat to Biden in a year where re-election is at stake.
In their communication, Mexican officials also reported that three people had drowned in that same area an hour earlier, at approximately 8:00 p.m. “Mexican people did not enter the United States,” said the Mexican Foreign Ministry in a statement aired on Sunday. The victims were originally from the State of Mexico and were not identified at that time. The bodies were rescued by the Beta group of the National Immigration Institute and the National Guard.
After being notified by the Mexican authorities, agents from the Border Patrol, the federal body in charge of monitoring the 3,000 kilometers of border with Mexico, tried to enter the Shelby Park area, guarded since January 11 by state police. “Through a closed gate, uniformed members of the Texas National Guard refused to allow the Border Patrol Supervisor to enter, arguing that they had been ordered to prevent the group from entering the park,” states the letter addressed to the Supreme Court. The superior of the stationed guards reported that the orders prevented the passage of federal agents even in “emergency situations.”
Although the Texas National Guard sent some agents to investigate, the migrants who were in danger were rescued by Mexican authorities despite being on the US side. They were taken out of the water with hypothermia and returned to Mexico along with two other people who tried to cross into the United States on Friday night.
The incident, according to the federal government, reflects “the firm effort” of Texas to control four kilometers of the border. “It is impossible to say what could have happened if the Border Patrol had had the access it normally has to the area, including the vehicles that allow it to monitor the area (…) at least the Mexican counterpart could have been assisted in the mission of rescue, but Texas made it impossible,” says the Department of Justice.
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The death of the three migrants has provoked harsh criticism of the Government of Republican Greg Abbott. “This is a tragedy and the State has a responsibility for it,” assured over the weekend Democratic Congressman Henry Cuéllar, one of the most prominent Latinos in the entity. “Republicans have successfully dehumanized immigrants so that there is no empathy in cases like this,” said Verónica Escobar, another Democratic representative from Texas in Congress.
Legislator Escobar recalled that Governor Abbott told a conservative radio host that his Administration is doing everything possible to strengthen border surveillance. “The only thing we are not doing is shooting at migrants because the Biden Government would accuse us of homicide,” the president assured on January 11, one day before the incident was recorded in the Rio Grande.
Washington has asked the Supreme Court to annul a decision of the Fifth Federal Circuit of Appeals that for the moment prohibits the Border Patrol from destroying the barbed wire installed on the border by Texas agents. State Attorney General Ken Paxton has explained that the Court of Appeals is already dealing with the matter expeditiously and that this is a maneuver by the Biden Administration to alter the appeals process.
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