One thing I never thought I would see is treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans do is turn ar0und and mock the border patrol. But obviously I was wrong again and their is no low they will not sink to.

 

We are here to make sure the laws are being enforced.


HEY WAIT WAIT WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? We meant enforce the laws on the Brown and Black people. Not us. We have White Christian Conservative Trump supporter privilege. You cannot apply any laws to us.



Pro-Trump Hosts Lose It On Cops Live At Border — For Trying To Tow Car Over Expired Tags
Tommy ChristopherFeb 5th, 2024, 3:53 pm
3045 comments




Pro-Trump host Jeremy Herrell and his co-hosts lost it on some cops who tried to tow a border activist’s car in the midst of an anti-migrant caravan over expired tags — or so they said.

Trump-favored media outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) has made a name for itself by building a brand around Trump rallies and MAGA-friendly commentary and other programs. But pro-Trump LFA TV has taken up the RSBN model and then some.

At a Trump rally a few weeks ago, Herrell whipped up the crowd about “illegals” and riled up some volunteers to hunt down migrants if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House.

“How many people would be willing to let to have Donald Trump deputize them when he becomes president to help them find every single illegal that’s in this country?” Herrell asked the crowd.

This weekend, Herrell got to host the next best thing — a caravan of truckers heading to the border to get a firsthand look at the migrant crisis and accuse others of being “Antifa agitators.”

But the live stream opened to chaos as Herrell yelled into his headset for Fellow LFA host Will Johnson — one of the on-the-spot co-hosts — to “STOP TALKING!”

That chaos turned out to be a drama that played out during the course of 19 of the first 40 minutes of the livestream, as an activist named Taylor explained that cops were trying to tow his car because of the “truths” he’s been revealing about “child trafficking” — but also his expired tags.

“My tags are very much expired,” Taylor confirmed to LFA, but insisted the real reason was his ripping-off of the lid on things that, the Sheriff’s deputies later informed him and LFA’s cameras, have nothing to do with them.

Johnson and others confronted the cops, with one off-camera individual asking, “Okay, so I mean, where’s the leniency for Americans? But we’re giving more leniency to the NGOs and illegals coming from across the border.”

The registration for the car expired in 2020, according to the cops.

About half an hour in, Herrell informed hosts on the scene that his viewers had raised $400.00 for Taylor, and eventually it turned out he was able to pay the tow truck driver $100 bucks on the spot to keep his car from being towed. Sounds legit.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/pro-t...rder-for-trying-to-tow-car-over-expired-tags/

 

Hey american hater!
Been waiting for you to crow about the part of the "pay Ukraine so they can pay the big guy" bill that includes a couple BILLION to pay "Non government Organizations assisting immigrants".

You know what that is, right?
To pay legal fees for immigrants, so they have representation in immigration hearings.
You know, like unaccompanied minors who, according to you, are DENIED LEGAL REPRESENTATION IN COURT

Cmon!
This is a perfect thing for you to spin!

 

FBI foils 2022 plot by militiamen to 'start a war' at the Texas-Mexico border

Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune William Melhado, The Texas Tribune
February 8, 2024 6:56AM ET









FBI agents disrupted a plot by three men – two of whom said they were part of a militia – to travel to the Texas-Mexico border to kill Border Patrol agents and immigrants crossing illegally because they believed the country was being invaded, according to court documents filed in federal courts.

One of the men also called and left a phone message to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to alert him about their plans, saying: “If y'all cannot take care of this border and shut it down then we will be forced to come in and do it ourselves,” according to a criminal complaint. The complaint does not say when he left this message but that he summarized his message to a confidential FBI source on a recorded phone conversation on Oct. 3, 2022.

The men — Bryan C. Perry, 38; Jonathan S. O’Dell, 33; and Paul Faye, 55 — were arrested by FBI agents and face various federal charges in connection to their alleged plot, which authorities say they started organizing in 2022 and planned to carry out in October 2023.

The most recent arrest was of Faye of Tennessee on Monday. He faces a single charge of being in possession of an unregistered firearm silencer.

In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that Perry had “extensive contact “ with Faye before Faye was arrested. Faye “expressed a desire to travel with Perry and another individual” to the border and “commit acts of violence,” the complaint says.

Perry and O’Dell are also accused of attempting to kill seven federal agents. According to the criminal complaint, as the FBI attempted to serve a search warrant at O’Dell’s home in Missouri, Perry fired approximately 11 shots from a multicaliber rifle at FBI agents.

Perry of Tennessee and O’Dell of Missouri were arrested in late 2022 and were indicted last year by a grand jury on several charges including conspiracy to murder a federal officer, conspiracy to assault a federal officer, attempted murder of a federal officer and assault of a federal officer, according to superseding indictments filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. After their arrests, authorities found six firearms, over 20 magazines, roughly 1,770 rounds of ammunition and other equipment at O’Dell’s residence.

According to the criminal complaint, Perry and O’Dell began talking as early as November 2021 about grievances they had with the federal government. The following year they attempted to recruit other members to their militia group to travel to Washington, D.C., “to stop the madness going on,” the complaint says. It also says that they shared maps of the Capitol and other governmental buildings.

“Basically start a war”
In August of 2022, Perry and O’Dell agreed to go “to war with the border patrol,” according to the superseding indictment. Perry later told a woman he attempted to recruit on TikTok and Instagram that his “intentions are to go down there and basically start a war,” the complaint says.

“I mean, you know I know a lot of people are like, well, we don’t want violence. Well, that’s what it’s gonna take for people to open up their eyes,” Perry told an undercover federal agent over the phone, the complaint says. “I’m goin down there to hold up a rifle. You come across, you’re gonna lose your life.”

According to the criminal complaint, Perry uploaded a TikTok video announcing the group’s plan to travel to the southern border with the intent of “shoot[ing] to kill.” O’Dell indicated in the comment section that they planned to go to Texas on Oct. 2, 2022. In the video, O’Dell appears holding the buttstock of a rifle. In other TikTok videos, Perry blames U.S. Border Patrol agents and said he viewed them as treasonous for allowing migrants to cross the border.

The complaints do not say where on the Texas-Mexico border the men intended to travel. But in Faye’s criminal complaint filed Feb. 2, the FBI said he was in communication with a person from North Carolina who had previously been to Eagle Pass with a militia group called NC Patriot Party and planned to travel back to the border on Jan. 20.

Lawyers representing the three men didn’t respond to an after-business-hours email from The Texas Tribune seeking comment. Both Perry and O’Dell have pleaded not guilty.

Authorities first learned of Perry’s threats to attack the federal government after receiving an anonymous tip in September 2022, according to the complaint.

Perry and O’Dell were members of the self-styled 2nd American Militia, according to an October indictment and made plans to travel to the border to shoot federal agents who opposed them and then take the ammunition and night vision goggles from murdered agents.

At one point, prior to Perry’s arrest, he told an FBI source that he called Abbott.

“I basically told him, I said look, we’ve uh – I am a cofounder of a militia out here in Tennessee and Missouri. Um, you know we’ve-we’ve been watching the news. We know that ya’lls (sic) watched people come across the border that are trafficking drugs,” Perry said, according to the criminal complaint. “You know, it’s not acceptable anymore. If ya’ll cannot take care of this border and shut it down then we will be forced to come in and do it ourselves.”

Abbott’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

“We are being invaded”
Faye’s arrest came one day after Abbott hosted Republican governors from across the country in Eagle Pass to double down on his border security tactics, which he has claimed are necessary to defend the state from an “invasion” of migrants. On Thursday, Abbott plans to host another press conference in Eagle Pass, this time with Republican lawmakers from Texas.

In an eight-page criminal complaint, the Justice Department outlined a months-long relationship between an undercover FBI agent and Faye, which began in March 2023 on the social media platform TikTok.

In December, just over a year after Perry and O’Dell were arrested, the FBI agent and Faye discussed a plan to travel south with unregistered firearms and explosive devices to carry out a plan with militia groups from Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee “to stir up the hornet’s nest” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Faye discussed his belief that the government was training to take on its citizens, and more specifically, that the federal government was allowing illegal immigrants to enter the United States to help the government ,” the complaint read.

The complaint alleges that Faye told the undercover agent that he could gather necessary gear for their plan, like bullet-proof vests, from deceased individuals “as we go.” Additionally, Faye told undercover agents that he was already in possession of explosive targets and that he had boobytrapped his property in the event law enforcement came to his home, the complaint alleges.

In January, Faye transferred the unregistered silencer to the federal agent as they prepared to travel to the southern border, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. After Faye’s arrest, law enforcement searched his property in Cunningham, Tennessee and recovered several firearms, a silencer, explosive targets and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the release stated.

Last year, according to the complaint, Faye asked the undercover agents to train together in person before traveling to the border, saying that the “patriots are going to rise up because we are being invaded. We are being invaded.”

Abbott has repeatedly characterized the high numbers of migrants — many of whom are seeking political asylum — arriving at the Texas-Mexico border as an invasion. His campaign used the term as recently as Wednesday morning in a fundraising email. And lawyers for Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office recently tried to make a legal argument saying Texas is being invaded by “transnational cartels.” However, District Judge David Ezra dismissed Texas' argument and wrote: "Such a claim is breathtaking."

Still, Abbott and other Republican leaders in Texas and across the country have doubled down on the use of the phrase, despite demands from immigrant rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers to stop using rhetoric that could inspire someone to commit violence against immigrants.

In August 2019, a gunman — who railed about an “Hispanic invasion” in a document published online — drove about 700 miles from Allen to El Paso and fatally killed 23 people and injured 22 others at a Walmart. According to the DOJ, the gunman has described himself as “a white nationalist, motivated to kill Hispanics because they were immigrating to the United States.”

Last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters in Eagle Pass that Texas is being invaded by “murders, molesters, terrorists, rapists, gang members, drug dealers, car jackers, kidnappers” in describing the people crossing the Texas-Mexico border. When asked by a reporter if using such language could inspire another violent attack such as the August 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, Patrick responded saying that is “a silly question.”

“Every time an elected official publicly embraces the rhetoric of the replacement and invasion conspiracy, they are contributing to a climate where someone with hate in their heart and a gun in their hand believes they should take matters into their own hands,” said Zachary Mueller, political director at America’s Voice, a progressive pro-immigration group.

Earlier in January, Abbott was heavily criticized for saying that Texas has used every tool to control the border short of ordering officers to shoot migrants.

“The only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder,” Abbott said during the Jan. 5 radio interview with Dana Loesch, a former editor at Breitbart News and spokesperson for the National Rifle Association.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, responded on social media to Abbott’s comments: “I can't believe I have to say 'murdering people is unacceptable.' @GregAbbott_TX. It’s language like yours that left 23 people dead and 22 others injured in El Paso.”



https://www.rawstory.com/fbi-foils-...en-to-start-a-war-at-the-texas-mexico-border/

 

All brandon has to do is secure the border.
He won't, his handlers wouldn't like it.

 

They are here illegally. If they care about their children they should not come. Problem solved.

The third world is an area of vast and growing misery. It is in our interest to keep these people out. We do not need them. We should not want them.

 

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! That's our Statue of Liberty you're pissing on.

 

"Frightening": Experts alarmed after Texas border "invaded" by far-right "God's Army" convoy
Areeba Shah
Sat, February 10, 2024 at 3:45 AM MST·7 min read
1.5k









A far-right convoy calling itself “God’s army” rallied in three cities near the southern border last weekend to decry what they called a migrant “invasion” as a result of escalating tensions between Texas Gov. leaving the page." data-wf-tooltip-position="bottom" data-wf-reset-every="90">Greg Abbott and the federal government in Eagle Pass, Texas.

The convoy, which was led by organizers known for promoting election denial narratives, QAnon and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, formed amidst Abbott’s disapproval of President Joe Biden’s handling of the southern border.

“Texas is on the frontlines of this battle for freedom and state’s rights for their constitutional right to close the border if the federal government will not,” Texas congressman Keith Self said at a rally in Quemado, Vice reported.


The convoy that passed through Eagle Pass attracted a blend of Christian nationalists, MAGA influencers, Jan. 6 rioters, QAnon conspiracy theorists and militia-style groups. The participants espoused anti-government conspiracies and dehumanizing language about migrants.

Mark McCloskey, who gained notoriety for brandishing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in June 2020, addressed the crowd, alleging a conspiracy involving the government and cartels in child trafficking.

“These people are evil, they are pedophiles, they’re monsters, they run our government, they hate us, they think they know better than us,” McCloskey said. “This is all the culmination in their minds of a century-old progress towards a single-world socialist government.”

He claimed that the “forces” that want to destroy “our republic” are “genuinely the forces of evil,” who hate “our republic” and “freedom,” according to Vice.

Sheriff Brad Coe from Kinney County, Texas, who previously characterized the border crossings by migrants, some of whom are seeking asylum from countries afflicted by violence or political and economic instability, as “a flat-out invasion,” also addressed the crowd.

“As Christians, we’re called to speak the truth and that’s something that, if you’re trying to control people, is very dangerous to those in power,” Coe said. “There's a reason why they make fun of calling yourselves God's Army because it’s God’s Army being called to tell the truth. That means that your loyalty is to God, it’s to the Constitution.”

Dehumanizing rhetoric, especially “comparing people to animals and to trash,” are common “extremist tactics,” Libby Hemphill, a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information and the Institute for Social Research, told Salon. The goal is to make some other group less relatable and seem less valuable so that extremists can justify actions and policies that hurt those groups.

Abbott has intensified border enforcement as part of a deepening conflict with the federal government over control of a section of the Texas-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, a town with approximately 29,000 residents, The Texas Tribute reported. While immigration law enforcement falls under federal jurisdiction, Abbott asserts that the Biden administration's lenient approach to immigration enforcement has compelled the state to take matters into its own hands.

Texas has for months continued to lay razor wire along the Rio Grande to repel asylum seekers from crossing the river. Last month, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in allowing Border Patrol agents to remove the wire put in place by Texas. The ruling neither explicitly provided Border Patrol agents access to the park nor mandated the removal of the concertina wire, leading Abbott to reaffirm his stance.

Abbott last week posted on X that Texas “will not back down from our efforts to secure the border.”

His sentiment echoed previous ominous statements he has made, where he “declared an invasion” and vowed to take “unprecedented action” to halt illegal border crossings. Abbott’s defiance has earned him support from prominent Republican figures including former President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and 25 Republican governors, Mother Jones reported.

Last month, 25 governors released a joint statement supporting Abbott for "stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country".

Half of them even traveled to Shelby Park and praised Abbott for his efforts in building a border wall, using razor wire and floating buoys at the border.

Abbott as well as the other governors supporting his stance, assert that “because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”

When people buy into these “dehumanizing narratives, or become immune” to them because they're so common, they stop seeing other people as equally deserving, making it easier to “set up false battles and stoke intergroup violence,” Hemphill said.

“There was a time when most of the violent extremism we saw in the United States was not politically motivated,” said Patrick Riccards, the CEO of Life After Hate — a nonprofit that helps deradicalize people from violent far-right groups and other extremist organizations. “There was still hating all sorts of groups, but it was it was not part of the political infrastructure. That's not true anymore. All of this is intertwined.”

From the very top, there's language and buzzwords that are serving as “rallying cries” to draw individuals, Riccards said.

The “God’s army” movement is a “frightening development” for our country, Riccards explained, adding that “the disorganization had been the one saving grace that we had.”

But now, as extremist groups band together in the United States, they begin to understand the potential power they have as a united front. “It becomes incredibly frightening,” he continued.

“Extremist networks are effectively all feeding off one another and snowballing,” Hemphill said. “They use grievances and othering to set up false ‘us versus them’ battles and make things seem like zero-sum games. These battle narratives rile people up and make them feel part of something.”

Contrary to the rhetoric echoed by some of these groups, local residents of Eagle Pass Border express a starkly different sentiment. They have told reporters that the recent presence of Republican officials and the trucker convoy promoting Abbott's divisive rhetoric have contributed to spreading "hate and dissension" in their community.

“We are constantly being told that we’re being invaded, and that never felt true until today, when the convoy came to town in anticipation of the governors’ event,” Jessie F. Fuentes told WOAI NBC News Channel 4. “This is political theater by outsiders. The reality is that it has brought dangerous, violent groups into our beautiful, peaceful city. Eagle Pass is safer than most cities in America if you look at crime statistics. This is just a fact. We don’t appreciate these staged events that dramatically misrepresent our reality on the border and that invite extremist groups that pose a real danger to people in our community.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Much of the rhetoric around issues of immigration at the border is not being used to signal to extremist groups to come defend the border, but is instead being employed to tell individuals who share that ideology that “I believe in you,” Riccards said.

“My greatest fear is that we're going to see some very real, ugly violence,” he explained. “These are individuals that have a specific belief, and they intend to enforce it.”

When it comes to maintaining public safety and addressing “safe paths” out of extremist organizations, Hemphill advised that individuals have to think of extremism as an “epidemic,” not just treat the symptoms like violence.

“Retribution against extremists or debating on their terms will not prevent violence or reduce their effectiveness,” Hemphill said. “People are susceptible to extremism, in part, because of real feelings of isolation, worry, financial strain and disempowerment. We need to recognize that folks are hurting and offer honest counternarratives about shared benefit and common humanity. People need something to be a part of and to feel like they matter; we can all understand that. Addressing the underlying reasons someone felt like extremists were a good fit for them will be more effective than trying to debate or punish people who are already bought in.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/frightening-experts-alarmed-texas-border-104503753.html

 

No, they tell us.
ILLEGAL MIGRANTS UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS don't get taxpayer dollars.
They can't take advantage of government money, that's just for American citizens.
Bullshit, eh?​

Report Shows More Than 60% of Illegal Immigrants Are on Government Assistance (msn.com)

Report Shows More Than 60% of Illegal Immigrants Are on Government Assistance
A recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) sheds light on the significant welfare dependency observed among households led by illegal immigrants and green card holders in the United States.

Authored by CIS analysts Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, the study utilized data from the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine the prevalence of taxpayer-funded welfare programs among non-citizen households.

According to the CIS report, a notable 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants utilize at least one major taxpayer-funded welfare program, in stark contrast to the 39 percent of U.S.-born households accessing such assistance. While government-funded social programs are typically unavailable to illegal aliens, benefits can be accessed through their U.S.-born children, allowing for access to welfare despite restrictions. Contrary to stereotypes, a significant portion of immigrant households, including those led by illegal immigrants, have at least one employed member.

In fact, 83 percent of all immigrant households and 94 percent of those led by illegal immigrants have at least one worker, challenging assumptions about welfare dependency and work ethic. The report underscores that welfare usage among immigrant households cannot be solely attributed to unemployment. Factors such as household composition, income level, and educational attainment also contribute to welfare dependency.

Immigrant households without children, high-income households, and those led by individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree were found to be more likely to use welfare compared to their U.S.-born counterparts. These findings come amid ongoing concerns about illegal immigration, with the Biden administration facing unprecedented levels of migration at the southern border.

The overwhelming influx of illegal aliens has prompted criticism from Democratic governors and mayors, who have raised concerns about the strain on local resources and taxpayer-funded services. New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have voiced challenges posed by illegal immigration in their respective cities. Mayor Adams announced significant budget cuts to offset costs, while Mayor Johnson filed a lawsuit against busing companies transporting migrants to Chicago, highlighting financial burdens on local governments.

 

Texas Soldiers Say Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star Is ‘A Show’
Matt Shuham
Updated Wed, February 14, 2024 at 3:14 PM MST·17 min read

Texas has put up 30 miles of concertina wire in the Eagle Pass area, draped atop a “steel wall” of shipping containers and strung across private ranches along the Rio Grande.

The concertina wire strung along several miles of Texas’ border with Mexico cuts through human flesh “like a knife.”

That’s according to one Texas Army National Guard soldier, who until recently served along the border under Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star.”


Migrants seeking asylum in the United States “are moving fast” when they encounter the “c-wire” after crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, said Alex, who is being identified by a pseudonym because they’re worried about retaliation from superiors.

“Especially when people are just wading through the water, and their skin is wet, it just slices right though,” Alex said.

Alex is one of a handful of soldiers who spoke to HuffPost regarding their concerns about Operation Lone Star, which since 2021 has sent state law enforcement and Texas National Guard soldiers to patrol the border. The guardsmen acknowledged they were a minority among their colleagues and that many seem to support Abbott’s mission.

But the soldiers who spoke to HuffPost said they are worried that Operation Lone Star dehumanizes migrants, diverts resources from needed areas into “political theater,” and improperly gives soldiers and state troopers sway over the application of federal immigration law — a job legally reserved for federal law enforcement.

Most of these soldiers have served in or around Eagle Pass, a popular crossing point that, in recentmonths, has been at the center of nationalheadlines. Texas has put up 30 miles of concertina wire in the area, draped atop a “steel wall” of shipping containers and strung across private ranches all along the Rio Grande— sometimes against landowners’ wishes. The Supreme Court issued an interim ruling last month saying that the U.S. Border Patrol could cut down the state’s wire, which the federal officials say is necessary to do so they can aid migrants and properly police the border.

Days before the Supreme Court decision, Texas had acted on its own, seizing total control of a 47-acre patch of land within Eagle Pass called Shelby Park. The park sits along the Rio Grande, under the shadow of a major bridge that connects the U.S. with Mexico, and it was previously a favorite crossing point for migrants eager to surrender to federal Border Patrol agents. Now, it’s a heavily militarized Operation Lone Star outpost to which federal agents have been denied access.

Soldiers now stuff Eagle Pass’s hotel rooms and bars by night. By day, they unspool millions of dollars of concertina wire to fill in the voids along the Rio Grande where the feds have cut it down — and, soldiers say, try to look intimidating.

John, a guardsman who worked in Eagle Pass who is also being identified by a pseudonym, said soldiers are tasked with trying to prevent people from crossing the Rio Grande. How? “Just stand there,” he said with a sigh. “That’s all we could do. They wanted us to be out there with your rifle and your full kit — your vest, your helmet — and look intimidating.”

“I definitely don’t believe in the mission,” John said. “I don’t think that it really was about stopping migration. I think it was just putting on a show.”

I definitely don't believe in the mission. I don’t think that it really was about stopping migration. I think it was just putting on a show.Texas Army National Guard soldier, speaking to HuffPost

‘It Is Doing Absolutely Nothing’
The show — all $9.5 billion of it, according to budget allocations set through 2025 — is playing to packed audiences during a crucial presidential election year.

Former President Donald Trump, the clear front-runner for this year’s GOP nomination, visited Operation Lone Star soldiers in November and earned Abbott’s endorsement.

Then, last month, Trump urged “all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.” Twenty-five governors affirmed their solidarity with Texas. Abbott hosted 13 of them in Shelby Park a few days later, posing with the crew in front of an armored vehicle. The governor referred to asylum seekers as an “invasion” — rhetoric that had previously been used by the perpetrator of the deadliest anti-Latino mass shooting in modern American history — and said Texas would defend itself.

Immigration advocates and some local officials say the high-profile efforts in Eagle Pass only serve to shift those asylum seekers around rather than preventing them from entering. Shelby Park is a “movie set,” and “the gates to the United States are open” just half a mile away, a spokesperson for the Eagle Pass Police Department told Texas Monthly earlier this month.

In that context, some Operation Lone Star soldiers say they feel like set decoration, complete with military humvees, rifles and camouflage uniforms.

“If anything, I think it makes for better pictures for campaign ads,” said Hunter Schuler, a former Texas Army National Guard medic who served in Shelby Park on Operation Lone Star and, at one point, led a historic union drive for soldiers. Schuler’s service ended last year, and he’s now pursuing a Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University.

“They have these elaborate demonstrations with riot gear and riot shields, and helicopters, and fast boats on the river,” he added. ”It seems like it’s meant to be a show of force, but it is doing absolutely nothing to stem the tide of migrants.”

John noted that military police in the National Guard typically only carry pistols. But on Operation Lone Star, leadership has them carry rifles.

“I think what has changed [since the start of Operation Lone Star] is that it’s been more focused on confrontation, photo-ops, and public displays of cruelty,” said Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Eagle Pass, he said, is made to look “ready for television coverage.”

The Texas Military Department, the state’s Department of Public Safety and the governor’s office all did not respond to detailed questions from HuffPost for this story.


A National Guardsman stands watch as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and fellow governors hold a news conference along the Rio Grande to discuss Operation Lone Star and border concerns, Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Trespassing Technicality
Even the legal framework behind Abbott’s border mission can feel theatrical. Operation Lone Star, according to the governor, is meant to “detect and repel illegal crossings” in addition to arresting people engaging in drug or human trafficking. But even Abbott has acknowledged that rather than keeping asylum seekers out of the country, the mission has simply diverted them elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Now, unlike before, migrants are choosing to go to states other than Texas,” he said last week during a press conference in Shelby Park.

Once on U.S. soil, even behind concertina wire, migrants have a legal right to claim asylum in the United States, regardless of whether an individual crosses at a “port of entry” or on the sandy banks of the Rio Grande. Typically, they simply seek out and surrender to a Border Patrol officer, enter U.S. custody, and participate in a preliminary “credible fear” interview. If immigration officers find a significant possibility they can establish an asylum claim, they are released into the country and assigned court dates to make their case.

Like Trump, President Joe Biden has made it harder for asylum seekers to pursue their legal rights. He has created a “higher threshold of proof” for some asylum seekers who simply cross the border without attempting to enter at a port of entry, which can take months, or apply for asylum in another country. The rule is called “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways,” or, to some, the “asylum ban,” and it remains in place while the government appeals a court order that found it unlawful. The bipartisan border bill currently stalled in Congress would make things even more restrictive.

Only federal law enforcement — not state forces or state National Guard soldiers — can enforce immigration law, so Texas often relies instead upon simple misdemeanor charges liketrespassing to detain migrants.

Migrants who cross onto private land are criminally charged and must be processed through the Texas state court system before eventually being able to proceed with an asylum claim. Curiously, this applies to Eagle Pass, too: The city’s mayor last year signed an affidavit declaring the public park private property, allowing state troopers to make trespassing arrests for migrants who crossed there. The city council later rescinded the affidavit, but Texas once again started making trespassing arrests in the park after seizing control of it, telling a judge in Maverick County that it was in the “care, custody, and control” of a Department of Public Safety officer, according to a court document HuffPost reviewed.

Abbott recently signed a bill to make crossing the border between ports of entry a state crime; civil and human rights groups call it “plainly unconstitutional,” and like many of Abbott’s immigration moves, the federal government has sued to stop it.

The trespassing arrests don’t remove migrants from the asylum process, said Kristin Etter, who has represented thousands of migrants facing such charges in state court.

“If anything, in an ironic twist, it actually increases people’s ability to request asylum because they’re given an attorney,” Etter said. In the United States, criminal defendants are guaranteed legal representation, while asylum seekers are not.

Another issue with Operation Lone Star is that National Guard soldiers aren’t given immigration law training. Under Operation Lone Star, they operate under the state’s Department of Public Safety, which is the civilian authority that includes state troopers, assisting to detain migrants who’ve allegedly violated state law.

But many migrants seeing Texas National Guard soldiers — in uniform, carrying rifles – don’t distinguish them from the standard Border Patrol officers to whom they would typically surrender to pursue an asylum claim.

“If you’re a migrant and you’re coming to our country, and you see a person — or two, three, four, five people – in uniform with an M4 standing in front of you, there’s an implied authority that you have,” Alex said. “They don’t realize we’re just citizen-soldiers on a state contract. So anything out of your mouth is authoritative.”

One of Etter’s clients recorded a video, which HuffPost has seen, of a National Guard soldier telling a group of migrants on the banks of the Rio Grande to go to a point on the border where he said they would be arrested for trespassing. The group of asylum seekers cheered, eager to enter government custody.

Alex recalled a fellow soldier falsely telling migrants that they would lose their right to asylum if they crossed where they had planned to.

John recalled migrants encountering the c-wire and asking where they should cross. Soldiers were told to tell migrants to go back across the river and to cross via a port of entry, even though they were already standing on American soil and could exercise their right to asylum by simply sitting down and waiting for Border Patrol, he said. (Abbott has said as much himself: National Guard and state police at the border, he said last June, “know they have one instruction: do not allow anybody to enter into the state of Texas. Period.” Just last month, he also said the state was doing everything short of murder to keep migrants out.)


A National Guard officer looks around at migrant families as more migrants arrive after crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. on May 5, 2022, in Roma, Texas.

Dangers In The Rio Grande
The concertina wire, which persists in many areas despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, is so ubiquitous on the border it’s now literally the logo for Operation Lone Star’s YouTube page. And it can cause significant physical harm, particularly after a tiring swim across the Rio Grande.

Accounts of the effects of Texas’ c-wire are numerous: Alex recalled one man with a laceration so severe there was “fat hanging out.” Last July, a state trooper working under Operation Lone Star wrote to a superior about a pregnant woman having a miscarriage after being found tangled up in the wire; he also recounted seeing a 4-year-old girl who’d attempted to go through the wire, only to be pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers before passing out from heat exhaustion.

The state said soon after the trooper’s email leaked that it was investigating the report and Abbott’s office said no orders had been given “that would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally.” Still, in January, a separate video from Eagle Pass showed Texas National Guard soldiers appearing to push migrants back across the razor wire, onto the banks of the Rio Grande.

Texas officials did not respond to HuffPost’s question about the video.

Also last year, USA Today reported on internal Department of Public Safety memos that detailed a mother and child transported to the hospital after being caught in the wire, in addition to reports of migrants needing staples to bind long gashes from the wire. The same paper published photos of a 5-year-old boy whose slashed leg had required four staples to hold shut. After the family had made it onto U.S. soil, they were ultimately processed by border agents and released with a court date.

“I don’t understand,” the boy’s mother told the paper, before referring to the concertina wire. “If they were just going to arrest us and let us go, why do they have to put all that up?”

Some soldiers have asked themselves that same question.

“At that point, they’re already on our side, they’ve crossed the river,” John told HuffPost, referring to migrants stuck between c-wire on Texas soil and the Rio Grande. “They’re not on this side of the razor wire, but ... they’re in the U.S. What really does it matter if we take them here or at the bridge?”

“I think it was a show. I think it was a little bit of theater because if they really wanted us to effectively deter immigration, there’s a better way — like what we were doing [elsewhere along the border],” said John, who said his unit had been reassigned to Eagle Pass from another point at the border where they were tracking down drug and human smugglers. “Because once you left the Eagle Pass–Piedras Negras area, there wasn’t anybody [patrolling the border]. We were all basically in the town. So if you just kept going to where there’s nothing, then you could have easily crossed.”

Yet more wire seems to be headed toward the area: Abbott announced just a few days ago that more soldiers and concertina wire were on the way to Shelby Park. State Rep. Eddie Morales (D), who represents Eagle Pass in the state legislature, and whose district includes a longer stretch of border than anyone else’s, called the announcement “a band-aid on a problem that requires a lot more attention.”

The wire isn’t the only danger to migrants — several have drowned in the Rio Grande, which is known for its deceptively strong currents, especially after heavy rainfall. It’s also home to long lengths of buoy barrier deployed by the governor, currently the subject of a federal appeals court fight. Exact drowning numbers aren’t known, but in September 2022, well before Operation Lone Star focused on the area, Eagle Pass’s fire chief told NPR his area was seeing “basically a drowning a day.”

Human rights advocates say Operation Lone Star has heightened the risk in Eagle Pass.

“That’s what we’re seeing — a spike in the number of people who are drowning in the Rio Grande,” Bob Libal, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, told HuffPost. “I can attest ... that it often occurs well within proximity to Texas officials who are either preventing federal authorities from accessing the border or who are not doing everything they can to look after migrant safety.”

In December, a video released by the civil rights organization Latino Justice PRLDEF showed a woman with a baby in her arms crying for help on the banks of the Rio Grande, as Texas National Guard soldiers watched from nearby boats, doing nothing. The pair eventually went back onto Mexican soil, and the Texas Military Department said in a statement that the duo had shown “no signs of medical distress, injury or incapacitation.” Then, last month, the bodies of three migrants were recovered in the Rio Grande near Shelby Park, and two others were rescued alive on the Mexican side of the river. During the search, Texas forces denied Border Patrol agents entry to the park; Texas later responded in a federal court filing that the migrants had drowned by the time federal agents alerted them, and that the feds had never referred to any ongoing “emergency” when they requested access to the park.

Multiple soldiers told HuffPost they’d been given orders to intervene in medical emergencies that threaten “life, limb or eyesight.” But that guidance comes with limits: After a National Guard member, Bishop Evans, died in 2022 while trying to save two drowning migrants, soldiers were discouraged from getting in the water.

A few weeks after Evans’ death, a Fox News reporter recorded the drowning death of a migrant — reportedly Calixto Rojas, a former radio host from Nicaragua, as National Guard soldiers and Mexican forces watched on. Since then, some soldiers have been given life rings that they can throw to migrants in distress in the water, but the concertina wire lining the banks of the Rio Grande seemingly rendered the rings ineffective.

“I don’t know how we would use that half the time because the c-wire was in the way,” John said of the floatation devices issued to soldiers. “There wasn’t really a good way to get down to the bank [without] getting cut up. And the rope would get caught up in the wire. I don’t know how they wanted us to use that.”

The Evolution Of Operation Lone Star
Despite their concerns about how Operation Lone Star has been executed, the soldiers involved in the program told HuffPost they believe the number of migrants and asylum seekers at the border in recent months does warrant a broader government response. Border Patrol alone, they said, did not have the manpower to keep track of everyone who wanted to enter the country, particularly with the backup at official ports of entry and the subsequent spillover elsewhere.

They also said there have been some positive changes. Work along the border used to largely come from soldiers who had been deployed there involuntarily — which came with serious logistical, pay and mental health issues. The deployment is now a largely voluntary one, staffed with young Texans who appreciate Operation Lone Star’s big paychecks.

Schuler, who said the risk of another involuntary activation played a role in his decision not to renew his contract, recalled seeing a young soldier crying when she was first being processed for her involuntary deployment to the border. When that time was up, he said, she volunteered to stay, having grown accustomed to the money.

Others even seem attracted to the border work specifically. When Schuler and several others were themselves set to end their time with the Guard, he recalled, the lieutenant colonel asked the group, “How many would extend if you could go down to the border mission?” Several hands went up, Schuler said.

And yet since Texas started freezing the feds out of Shelby Park, the federal-state relationship seems to have turned icy, soldiers say. There’s less chatter back and forth, and fewer calls for day-to-day assistance. At least once, Texas troopers threatened to criminally charge Border Patrol for cutting concertina wire, or as Abbott puts it, “Texas property.”

Then there’s the moral impact of the escalation in places like Eagle Pass, where soldiers posture for asylum seekers as if they’re expecting violent interactions.

“They’re not drug mules,” John said, recounting his final days at the border. He said he’d requested a move elsewhere in exchange for extending his service and was denied.

“They’re families. Children, women, pregnant women. It just sucked. I didn’t want to be in Eagle Pass. That’s why I left.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-soldiers-greg-abbott-operation-204311856.html

 

Another full page of anonymous source bloviation trying to make light of the crisis at the border.
Bidens crisis.

This ........... report ........(being generous here) tries to claim governor Abbot is just putting on a show. A publicity stunt.

A "stunt" that cut ILLEGAL MIGRANT CROSSINGS at Eagle park (a state park we note, texas didn't need to "seize control") to one single encounter. From thousands a month to one.
A publicity stunt they say.
A publicity stunt 25 other state governors support and offer help with.

But we now know its working, otherwise the despicable propaganda machine wouldn't be spewing about it like this.

 

I asked criminologists about immigration and crime in the US. Their answers may surprise you
Analysis by Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Thu, February 15, 2024 at 1:48 PM MST·10 min read
623




The number caught my attention the moment I saw it.

In a new Pew Research Center report about the situation at the US-Mexico border, 57% of Americans say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime.

In other words, most people in the US are now tying crime to recent increases in immigration.


That jumped out at me because it flies in the face of years of studies looking at what actually happened after immigrants came to communities across the US. Many researchers crunching the numbers have found there’s no connection between immigration and crime. Some have even found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US.

Crime wasn’t the focus of Pew’s recent survey, which found that Americans overwhelmingly fault the government for how it’s handled the situation at the border and gave respondents a chance to weigh in on possible policy solutions.

But when those surveyed were asked specifically about the impact of the migrant influx on crime, there were stark differences across party lines, with 85% of Republicans linking the migrant influx to crime, compared to 31% of Democrats.

The survey also found that 39% of Americans don’t think the migrant influx has much of an impact on crime.

The Pew report is based on a survey of 5,140 adults conducted from January 16-21.

Its release comes on the heels of several high-profile criminal cases in New York City allegedly involving recent migrants, including an assault of police officers in Times Square and a string of cell phone robberies that prompted the police commissioner to declare in a recent news conference that “a wave of migrant crime” had “ washed over” the city.

Mayor Eric Adams has stressed that most of the migrants who recently arrived in New York aren’t committing crimes.

“The overwhelming number of 170-plus thousand migrants and asylum seekers are attempting to continue their next leg of their journey of pursuing the American dream. But those who commit a crime will be treated like any other criminal in this city,” he said.

“These small number of people are breaking the law and having a huge impact on our public safety, and that is why we zeroed in on them.”

All this raises some key questions: Are we seeing an increase in crime tied to immigration? Or is there a gap between public perception and reality? And what can happen when we focus on individual incidents and don’t take stock of the bigger picture?

To get a better sense of what’s going on, I spoke with several criminologists before Pew’s report came out. This is what they told me (edited for length and clarity):


These experts have analyzed hundreds of studies about immigration and crime. Here’s what they learned
Charis Kubrin and Graham Ousey literally wrote the book on immigration and crime. They’ve been researching these issues for decades and analyzed numerous studies for their 2023 book, “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” Kubrin is a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, and Ousey is a professor of sociology and criminology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

One reason I reached out to you is there have been some recent high-profile incidents in New York getting some attention.

Kubrin: When I heard about the New York incident, the first thing when I hear about this on the news is like, “Oh, God, here we go.” Because these anecdotal instances — not to minimize the seriousness ever — but the rare occurrences where individuals who are foreign-born, let alone undocumented, are engaging in crime, and it makes the news, I worry about the cascade effect of these incidents overshadowing what we know in the broader context about immigration and crime. Because these are flashpoints. They strike a nerve.

Ousey: Human beings commit crime in pretty much all societies across the globe. But the bottom line is what gets lost in those anecdotal stories — those lead you to a flashpoint of negativity in which you ignore all the potentially good things that immigrants bring to our society. And it’s frustrating to try to bring evidence to the table and try to contextualize things and put it statistically when you’re arguing against this flashpoint that allows people to more or less kind of ignore everything else.

So many people that will respond to those public opinion polls and will recognize that immigrants, you know, have contributed greatly in beneficial ways to society. So it’s like, what are the driving forces that perpetuate, that you know that association (between immigration and crime)? And why does it have so much power? Why does it have so much influence on the way that we think about immigrants more generally or undocumented immigrants specifically? I’m not sure of the answers, but that’s one of the things that kind of really is intriguing me.

What’s the takeaway that you want people to have from your book?

Kubrin: Across a variety of studies that use different years of data that focus on different areas of the United States – with some exceptions, there’s some nuance there. I don’t want to deny the nuance – in general, on average, we do not find a connection between immigration and crime, as is so often claimed. The most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area, or is negatively associated with crime in that area. Meaning more immigration equals less crime. It’s rare to find studies that show crime following increases in immigration or with larger percentage of the population that are immigrants.

Ousey: A lot of people when you say that will then say, “Oh, well, but what about undocumented immigration?” And there’s less research on that topic. But that body of research is growing, and it pretty much reaches the same conclusion.


People are very focused right now on the migrants who’ve recently arrived. Are there studies that look at any of these cities that have seen an influx?

Kubrin: I’m not aware of any (yet).

Based on your expertise from looking at many studies over many years, do you think it’s reasonable to hypothesize or extrapolate that these kinds of longstanding trends would be observed in this group as well in terms of immigration and crime? What would be your theory?

Kubrin: This is where we have to be careful. Because I do think this is a unique population and a unique context. Immigrants are a very diverse group. We talk about immigrants as if they’re one block, right? But they vary on everything, including their motivation for coming to the United States. I do think with some of the recent arrivals we have certain situations where migrants are coming with very little in hand, having escaped extremely traumatic events, coming as refugees in many cases into locations that are not particularly welcoming, and don’t have the resources to help them. Let’s be realistic. Those are not ideal conditions. At the same time, I find it interesting that with all of these thousands of individuals, the headlines so far have been two or three (incidents). The story is not, why are these migrants committing these crimes against police officers? It’s how is it that thousands and thousands and thousands of migrants with these conditions are coming and not engaging in crime? That’s the headline to me.

What are the real-world consequences of these kinds of sweeping statements we hear painting immigrants as criminals?

Kubrin: The consequences of those stereotypes and getting it wrong are that we are pushing and supporting policies on the assumption that immigrants bring crime. And those policies are not only not working, but they’re having collateral consequences that impact not just immigrants themselves, but American society more broadly. … So it’s not just like an academic exercise of public opinion to talk about this. The consequences, the stakes, are pretty darn high.

If we actually want to get rid of crime or lower crime in society, our conclusion is … that restrictive, harsh, exclusionary immigration policy is not going to do it. And there’s a lot of collateral harms, whether we’re talking about the harms to family or children with deportation policies, or the family separation policies, or hate crimes committed as a result of claims about immigrants being criminals.

Is there a ‘wave of migrant crime’ in New York? This expert says it’s too soon to say
Christopher Herrmann is a former crime analysis supervisor for the New York Police Department. Now he’s an assistant professor in the Department of Law & Police Science at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

New York Police Commissioner Edward Caban recently described a “wave of migrant crime” in the city as he announced a bust in a ring of cell phone thefts. Is that what’s happening?

There’s an increase in robbery. Is the increase enough to call it a crime wave? No. Are you sure the migrants were responsible for the increase in robbery? No. Do we know if the victims were also migrants? No. … It’s tough to call it a migrant crime wave when we don’t know all these things.


Is there any big-picture data that you would look at to think about what the impact might be of this large number of recent arrivals in the city?

When a New York Daily News reporter asked me about this recently, I gave her what I thought was a good formula: Why don’t you take police precincts that have shelters in them and just look at that sample. Is crime up? Is crime down?

That report in the New York Daily News ended up finding that, in the places they looked at where shelters are located, crime is down this year compared to the same time last year in most categories.

Yeah, most people will tell you that illegal immigrants are better than US citizens when it comes to crime. They’re afraid of getting deported.

Is that a trend you observed when you were at NYPD?

The problem is — and this is definitely like a blue state, red state issue — for a lot of the blue states, we don’t even record immigration status. We don’t really care about that. If you’re committing a crime, we’re going to arrest you. We’re going to put you in jail. If it comes up that you’re not a citizen, and we’re kind of mad at you, then we’re going to maybe turn you over to ICE. But the reality is, a lot of times, we’ll just put you through our system and treat you like every other criminal.

So you wouldn’t really know?

Yeah, there’s no easy way to dig down into this and really figure out, is that an immigrant problem? Is it not an immigrant problem? But I would almost equate it to … like, the New York City subways. Whenever there’s a high-profile incident in the New York City subways, then all these stories come out and everyone is afraid of the subway. And I did the math and it was like eight serious felony violent felonies with like half a million people riding the subway. People like to focus on these high-profile media incidents. I’m not saying that the high-profile incidents didn’t happen. I’m just saying they’re not the norm. They’re the outlier.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/authoritarianism-expert-exposes-cruel-tactic-103714237.html

 

Not in other words those are the words.

 

Another full page of leftist propaganda blovation attempting to minimize the brandon induced and promoted invasion of our borders.
Fail.

If we fail to secure our borders and provide for our security not much else matters.

 

First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande
Morgan Chesky and Alicia Victoria Lozano
Sun, February 25, 2024 at 9:00 AM MST·6 min read
1.3k





EAGLE PASS, Texas — The crisis unfolding at the U.S.-Mexico border since last year has spilled over into the fire engines and ambulances of a small Texas town.

First responders in Eagle Pass say they are overwhelmed and increasingly traumatized by what they see: parents drowned or dying, their children barely holding onto life after attempting to cross the Rio Grande.

The emotional strain on firefighters and EMTs has grown so great that city officials have applied for a state grant that would bring in additional mental health resources for front-line workers.

“It’s an unprecedented crisis,” said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello. “It’s nothing close to what I experienced while I was on the line. It’s a whole different monster.”

Firefighters say the first calls for help usually blare through the three stations in Eagle Pass while crews are still sipping their morning coffee, bracing themselves for what the day will bring.

Parents with young children might be near drowning or trapped on islands somewhere between the United States and Mexico, surrounded by the fierce currents of the Rio Grande.

On some shifts, firefighters with the Eagle Pass Fire Department can spend three to five hours in the water, helping rescue migrants crossing the river or recovering their drowned bodies.

“It’s something we’ve never gone through,” said Eagle Pass native Marcos Kypuros, who has been a firefighter and EMT for two decades. “It’s been hard having to keep up with that on top of everything else we take care of.”

Eagle Pass has become ground zero in recent months for an unrelenting border crisis that is equal parts political and humanitarian.

With hundreds of thousands of people attempting to cross the border illegally each year near Eagle Pass, city emergency personnel have increasingly been called upon to perform difficult and often dangerous rescues or to retrieve dead bodies, they said. They do this while juggling other emergencies in the city of 28,000 and throughout sparsely populated Maverick County.

“They see decomposing bodies, they see children that have drowned. Babies 2-months-old, with their eyes half-open, their mouths full of mud,” Mello said. “I know that when I signed up, they told me that I would see all of that, but not in the number that these guys are seeing now.”

Call volumes to the fire department surged last summer after Title 42, which set limits on asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States, was lifted. On a typical day, the department might receive 30 calls, but the number has doubled in recent months, Mello said.

The added strain prompted one of his firefighters, who was still working through the required probationary period, to turn in his gear and switch careers entirely, he added.

After a record-breaking number of illegal crossings in December, federal authorities say the figure dropped by half in January. The most significant decrease was in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass.

But the steady rise in crossings last year has taken a toll on first responders who did not sign up for this kind of work, Kypuros said.

“Those times where we recover four or five, six, up to seven bodies a day — it was just rough,” he said.

As the number of calls for emergencies on the border grew last fall, so did the number of sick days firefighters requested, according to the fire chief.

“I try and leave all this at work, not take it home with me, but it’s so hard,” Kypuros said. “Sometimes it’s hard to cope.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It was not immediately clear when the funds the city applied for would be awarded.

After the record-breaking number of attempted border crossings last year, Abbott ramped up the state’s immigration enforcement efforts. Last week, he announced the deployment of 1,800 members of the Texas National Guard to Eagle Pass in an effort to curb illegal crossings.

Abbott, a Republican, installed razor wire near the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass as part of the enforcement operation, and previously placed buoys in the river to prevent crossings.

Firefighters have treated lacerations and open wounds from people trying to crawl through the concertina wire, Kypuros said. At times, local hospitals get so overwhelmed with patients from the border that wait times for a bed can stretch to two hours, Garcia added.

As thousands of people without pathways to U.S. citizenship wait in squalid, makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border, others attempt dangerous river crossings across the Rio Grande, endangering their own lives and those of their loved ones.

Harish Garcia, who has worked as a firefighter EMT in Eagle Pass for three years, still cannot shake the memory of a drowning mother and her young daughter. Garcia’s crew, including a firefighter with a daughter around the same age as the little girl, loaded the two into an ambulance, he said, but it was too late.

When crews returned to the station, some called their families. Others went quiet, Garcia said.

“Unfortunately, calls are going to keep coming in after that, so we can’t hang on to that for too long,” he said months later. “We have to just let it go and move on to the next call.”

Garcia and Kypuros say they’ve lost count of how many bodies they’ve recovered in recent months. The majority are found after failed attempts to cross the river, but other calls have led fire crews into the rough brush of South Texas, where dehydration and exposure can prove just as deadly.

David Black, a psychologist who has worked with the California law enforcement community for more than 20 years, said witnessing the death of a child is often the most traumatizing event a first responder can experience. Without a strong support system both in and out of the workplace, that stress can eat away at them.

“We outsource our worst-case scenarios to first responders,” he said. “If you have your own children, that can really impact how you look at your own family.”

As Eagle Pass waits for the state grant to be approved, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal workers already have access to mental health resources internally.

The services, which include on-site clinicians and field psychologists, are part of a larger effort to “improve resiliency and encourage our colleagues to seek help when they need it,” said Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner.

Mello said that despite the uncertain nature of the border crisis and the political tensions between the White House and the governor’s office, he is optimistic that help will come.

Until then, he knows the calls for help will keep coming.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-responders-texas-town-struggling-160000573.html

 

Blood on Biden administrations hands.
They can stop this today.
Now.