Feds 'Assess' Alleged Texas Orders To Push Children, Nursing Babies Back Into Rio Grande. Assess Faster, Guys.

Let he who hasn't caused a 19-year-old to miscarry while caught in razor wire cast the first stone.

The US Justice Department is looking into allegations that Texas state troopers were ordered to push migrants back into the Rio Grande and to withhold water from them even during a heatwave. DOJ spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told CNN that the department “is aware of the troubling reports, and we are working with DHS and other relevant agencies to assess the situation,” as a possible first step toward a formal investigation.

Also, can you imagine the previous “presidential” administration having a Cabinet department spokesperson named “Xochitl,” or what the racist in chief would have tweeted about that?

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Previously:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Ordered Troopers To Push Children Into The River

US-Mexico Border Quiet. A Little TOO Quiet.

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On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned Texas’s placement of miles of razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande:

“It is abhorrent. It is despicable. It is dangerous,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that if the accounts are accurate, the state’s actions violate “bedrock values.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a press call with other Texas Democrats that Gov. Greg Abbott “placed death traps in the Rio Grande and has now issued barbaric orders to state troopers that endanger people’s lives.” The Dallas Morning News notes that podcaster and occasional Republican Senator Ted Cruz has not returned calls for comment, while fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn explained last week, before the allegations surfaced, that Abbott had no choice but to treat the border like a war zone because Joe Biden Open Borders Irresponsible.

The story broke after a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper who was working as a medic reported his concerns to supervisors about a number of things he witnessed, including a June 25 incident in which he and other troopers came across a group of 120 migrants, including children and women with nursing babies.

The entire group was exhausted hungry and tired. We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning. We made contact with command again and expressed our concerns and we were given the order to tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave.

The email also included accounts of a four-year-old girl collapsing of heat exhaustion after the group she was with was forced to turn back, a 19-year-old pregnant woman who had a miscarriage while she was caught in razor wire, a 15-year-old boy who broke his leg when he tried to cross a section of river away from razor wire and buoys blocking the Rio Grande, and a father whose leg was lacerated by underwater razor wire as he tried to rescue his son from a “trap.” He also said that during the week of June 24 to July 1, at least five migrants drowned in the “area of operation” near Eagle Pass, Texas.

Immigration experts on Twitter are now pointing out that if people just would stay where they belong they wouldn’t drown, collapse of heat exhaustion after being denied water, or have miscarriages while caught in razor wire, and that only the worst parents in the world would try to seek asylum in the US in such dangerous circumstances.

In addition to the federal attention, Texas’s Office of the Inspector General is investigating the claims. Texas DPS spokesperson Travis Considine said that “There is not a directive or policy that instructs Troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river,” so we should assume there’s nothing actually written down.

The San Antonio Express-News offered this example of bad journalism Wednesday, confusing the verbs “denied” and “refuted,” or just plain assuming that a police spokesperson would never ever lie:

On Wednesday, a top DPS official refuted that they are doing anything to harm people trying to cross the river.

“No trooper has been told to physically push migrants back into the river,” DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez said.

He said when the agency is trying to push migrants back from crossing the river, they mean by demonstrating a show of force to get migrants to turn back to Mexico or go to official ports of entry.

Yeah, that’s the ticket, sure. The silly DPS officer simply misunderstood the commanding officer who said on the phone to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” not recognizing it was a metaphor for a show of force to deter people who weren’t already there. Mmm-hmm. That was enough for the rightwing bloggers at Hot Air to declare the DPS trooper’s report was obviously a hoax, and to accuse journalists and the DOJ of being credulous fools for believing a word of it.

In other developments, the invaluable Texas Tribune passes along a paywalled Houston Chronicle story about a pecan farmer in Eagle Pass, who says that

officials working for Abbott’s border security operation refused to take down razor wire on his property, despite his multiple requests. The farmer, Hugo Urbina, said many people, including a pregnant teenager, have been injured by the wire that the state installed against his wishes. DPS told the Chronicle that under a border-related disaster declaration the governor signed in 2021, the state can use private property without the owner’s permission.

Urbina said he had asked Victor Escalon, the DPS director overseeing Abbott’s border operations in the area, to remove the razor wire because it was injuring people and preventing the Border Patrol from reaching people in distress, but that Escalon told him the orders came “from the top” and that “I’m going to do what I’m going to do.”

Escalon told the Chronicle that the razor wire was a good thing, actually, and that orders are orders:

“Gov. Abbott made it very clear: His expectations are we stop and stem the flow of migrants,” Escalon said.

“That’s the authority — we need to stop bad things from happening,” Escalon said. “It’s private property, so it goes back to the disaster declaration. We are preventing crimes from occurring; we are preventing bad things from happening in the community and other parts of the state. That's our stance.”

Ergo, pregnant teenagers have to get tangled in barbed wire for the greater good. It’s so clear now.

Finally, in an editorial published Tuesday, the Chronicle condemned Abbott’s cruelty at the border and commended “the troopers courageous enough to show Abbott what a moral compass looks like.” That same editorial, and a tweet promoting it, publicly named the trooper who had reported the horrific scenes he’d witnessed, so now rightwing maniacs who think all asylum seekers should be shot will be able to find the trooper more easily — no doubt to congratulate him for speaking truth to power and being a moral example to us all.

[CNN / Texas Tribune / Dallas Morning News / Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News / Joel Montfort on Twitter]

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