Texas Guard Stone Cold Shooting Mexico Like Yosemite Sam, Pew Pew Pew, Pew Pew.
Someone please wake Merrick Garland.
Saturday night, a Texas National Guard member fired his weapon across the Rio Grande and wounded a Mexican citizen. A military spokesperson released this classic example of cop-speak:
On the night of 26 August, a National Guard Servicemember assigned to Operation Lone Star discharged a weapon in a border-related incident. The incident is under investigation. More information will be made available as the investigation progresses.
This “border-related incident” could become an international one, as US service members forces shouldn’t shoot people in another county, unless some sort of police action or operation of enduring freedom has been declared.
Border hawk conservatives would tell us to save the sob stories, because according to the Spanish language newspaper El Diario, the wounded man, Darwin José García from Veracruz, told police he was in fact attempting to cross the border and invade the US. However, he later told reporters he was enjoying a recreational activity on the decidedly Mexican side of the Rio Grande while other migrants, who weren’t him, crossed the river. He then heard shots and realized he’d been hit in the leg. Other sources claim that García was playing vigilante himself and attacking migrants with a knife when he was shot. If he receives a flattering Fox News interview, we’ll know who’s right.
The Texas National Guard member who shot García was part of Operation Lone Star, and as the silly name indicates, this is a “border security initiative” that Gov. Greg Abbott launched on his own in 2021. He apparently believed an increase in border crossings was a greater threat to Texans than the ongoing pandemic, which would kill 9,000 residents between February and July 2021. He should’ve launched Operation Vaccination (instead of mostly doing the opposite).
Abbott issued a disaster declaration as fuzzy justification for deploying the National Guard to the border. The governor and Texas Republicans, who control the Legislature, committed $2 billion of state money over two years to this farce, which costs taxpayers $2.5 million a week. The state’s child poverty rate is currently above the national average at 20 percent.
Enforcing immigration law is a federal matter, but Abbott’s disaster declaration has increased state trespassing penalties and he’s directed state troopers to bust migrants on trespassing charges if they’re caught on private property. The Texas Tribune first reported back in September 2021 that “hundreds of people arrested and detained under Operation Lone Star were not charged with a crime for weeks, and dozens were not given a lawyer for more than a month.”
Texas law dictates that criminals must be assigned an attorney within three days of asking for one, and state law requires that defendants be released from jail if prosecutors delay cases by not filing charges quickly. Because most imprisoned migrants are charged with trespassing, that deadline would be 15 or 30 days, depending on the severity of the charge.
García wasn’t trespassing. He was still in Mexico.
This is the second time since Operation Lone Star began that a Texas National Guard member has shot a civilian at the border. Most recently, on January 14, Spc. Angel Gallegos shot migrant Ricardo Rodriguez Nieto in the shoulder near Mission in the Rio Grande Valley. Gallegos claimed he accidentally fired his service weapon while wrestling with Nieto, who in turns denies ever touching Gallegos. In fact, he claims the shot was fired from the kitchen of an abandoned home into the the living room. Texas Rangers interviewed witnesses who confirmed Nieto’s story, but they were also migrants so that probably doesn’t count. The Hidalgo County District Attorney declined to present the case to a grand jury, presumably because there was insufficient non-migrant evidence.
The Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based immigrant rights group, condemned Saturday’s shooting and called for an investigation by the US Department of Justice. The DOJ was supposedly investigating Operation Lone Star already for civil rights violations.
Illegal border crossings in Texas have actually dropped by more than half since Title 42 expired in May, but it is politically expedient for Abbott and his fellow ghoul Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to claim we are in the middle of a full-scale, open border invasion. DeSantis has repeatedly proposed straight-up bombing Mexico, a US ally.
Only the president and Congress can wage war on other nations. This is not within the job description for even the most vicious Jim Crow governors, no matter how much they might enjoy tormenting brown people.
Maybe when Jack Smith gets some free time, he can take a hard look at Greg Abbott.
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OT - here's a nice, food related distraction for you:
The scones turned out beautifully. Sunday's recipe will be a good one.
I'll post a Note tonight with instructions for how to make your own clotted cream, just incase it's one of those British delicacies that has not yet made it over to the USA.
O/T Just checking in to let everybody know I made it through Idalia last night (minus a little thunder-y thing that made the power flicker during Wonkzooms)
We're under ANOTHER tornado watch until 3PM today (I'm in Florida, on the West coast) but other than that, just waiting out the storm!
@WomanComingHome (I'm not sure how to tag people yet. LOL)