Does the ICC at the Hague have a 911 line?
Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”
The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.
According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.
The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water.
“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
I think we crossed that line awhile ago. I don’t want to share a planet with people who would do this. I’m too numb to say anything else right now. My God, we need to vote some people out of office.
Remember when Beto was running against Abbott and said that he didn’t think Abbott woke up and wanted people to die? He was wrong. Abbott and his minions not only want this, they revel in it. Look at this depravity and tell me he doesn’t want people to suffer. Causing suffering is their norm. They will only get worse
My vote for the catch phrase that will best describe the 2020s: “The cruelty is the point.”
I commend this state trooper who can actually distinguish right from wrong and had the moral courage to speak against it. You will get no argument from me on the observation that our immigration system is a total unenforceable mess long overdue for a major and reality-based overhaul. I also won’t disagree with the assertion that it’s the US Congress where the fix needs to happen (as opposed to EO’s by the President or the governors). But it won’t happen as long as Congress is in gridlock.
Ain’t saying what the Trooper did was right, but the only one way to not get caught on the concertina wire or stranded on a mid-river buoy is to not put yourself in that position to begin with. There ARE ways to legally enter the US – trust in THAT process.
Yes if people would just follow the rules, everything would be so much easier. But some don’t. This is not to say that having rules is useless, but rather you should think out PlanB, C, D etc. for when people won’t follow them. Plus, in the case of our immigration system, the signals are absolutely mixed. You’ve got one faction saying “stay out!”, but another saying “help wanted”. Look to FL for this hypocrisy in its most blatant and shameless form. You have a state rep who is a farmer, who voted for a bill to crack down on hiring undocumented people under the table, but is now begging those people not to leave the state. I can’t take all the “just follow the rules” rhetoric around immigration seriously when it’s being applied overwhelmingly to the poor and desperate people and not much at all to the well-off who profit from cheap labor. The current rules are not based in reality, which makes them doomed to fail.
And to repeat myself, fixing this broken and hypocritical system is Congress’s long overdue job.
Amen, Fly.
My father’s parents were “unaccompanied minors,” but legal because being Polish Catholics hadn’t become illegal just yet. That got started when the influx of different people started hysteria about “dirty Polaks,” “drunken Irish,” “filthy (name whatever), etc., etc.”
My dad – the youngest – was the first to go to college and he got us out of that effin’ valley a generation before the rest did; my generation has more than one doctorate.
If someone wants to get here that bad, dammit, I WANT them here. They want nothing more than something better for them and their kids, and are willing to literally walk thousands of miles and crawl over broken glass and razor wire to do it. How can they not make this a better place?
Pingback: Feds to sue over Abbott – Off the Kuff