Texas trooper criticizes Abbott’s border policies as ‘inhumane’
AUSTIN, Texas — Inspector General Investigates Alarming Report on Border Security
The inspector general for the state’s Department of Public Safety has launched an investigation into a trooper’s alarming report that state-driven border security efforts have led to horrific repercussions for immigrants, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Internal DPS communications obtained by the Washington Examiner revealed how the department communicated for two weeks about how to handle one employee’s concerns, which were first brought to the department’s attention on July 3. The complaint alleged that immigrants had been hurt, and even killed, as a direct result of the state’s increasingly hostile barbed wire and water buoy barriers at the border.
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“The Office of the Inspector General is investigating the allegations made in the email in question,” said Texas DPS spokesman Travis Considine in an email to the Washington Examiner Tuesday. “There is not a directive or policy that instructs Troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river.”
A trooper-medic deployed to Eagle Pass, Texas, in late June detailed his experiences while assigned to the border on how immigrants, including pregnant women and children, were at risk of drowning, injury, and death as a result of policies that he thought crossed the line into the inhumane. His name is being withheld for privacy reasons.
The trooper first said he had been working on June 25 when he and another trooper encountered “120 people camped out along the fence line,” including small children and 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,” the trooper wrote in a July 3 email to his superior obtained by the Washington Examiner. “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. After we left, members of the brush team coordinated with Border patrol and got the people processed and taken care of.”
San Antonio-area Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) called the allegations an “absolutely monstrous, inhumane policy” for how “Governor Abbott’s troops have been told to push migrant children back into the Rio Grande to drown.”
On June 30, a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire was “pressed back” by Texas National Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them.” The girl fainted shortly after and was then extricated and transferred to the trooper for emergency care, according to the account.
That same day, the trooper treated an adult man who had a large laceration on his leg from trying to free a child on top of a “trap” in the river and, in doing so, cut his leg open. DHS provided various pictures of the wounded immigrants.
Later in the day, the trooper encountered a boy who broke his leg “while walking in the river due to casualty wire being laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.” He later found a 19-year-old pregnant woman stuck in the concertina wire. The woman was “doubled over” in the wire and in “obvious pain” as she had a miscarriage.
The following day, Border Patrol informed the trooper of a separate incident in which a mother and two children drowned trying to cross the river, which the trooper stated was because the casualty wire “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper.”
“I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star; I believe we … have stepped over a line into the in humane [sic]. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God,” the trooper wrote. “We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”
The trooper’s concerns were circulated to his sergeant and then further up the chain to more than a handful of people from July 4 through July 11.
Considine said the department was taking the concerns seriously and that DPS Director Steve McCraw had been looped into the emails and responded multiple times, including on July 15.
“Crossing through the concertina wire without protective gear is no doubt likely to result in an injury. This is self evident, but we need to ensure that migrants are reminded of this by signage and continued verbal warnings,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying [to] cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.”
McCraw called for the department to review safety measures, as well as if more could be done to minimize the risks to immigrants.
“The sooner the better. The cartels continue to push migrants across the river in the Eagle Pass area and this would be a good place to begin the review,” McCraw said.
The injuries have not stopped since then. In the first two weeks of July, Border Patrol’s Del Rio, Texas, regional office listed six incidents in which immigrants who crossed the border illegally were injured and received elevated medical care as a result of trying to pass through circular concertina wire along the U.S. shoreline.
The number of immigrants injured as a result of the state’s operation has increased recently, according to Border Patrol information shared with Texas DPS.
House Democrats have called on the Department of Homeland Security and State Department to intervene and stop Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) border security operation.
Abbott issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, doubling down on the mission.
“Operation Lone Star agency partners use verbal warnings and signage to direct migrants attempting to illegally cross from Mexico into Texas to use ports of entry to protect the lives of migrants, DPS troopers, and Texas National Guard soldiers,” Abbott said in a statement. ”Until President Biden reverses his open border policies and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue protecting Texans and Americans from the chaos along the border.”
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The trooper did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district includes Eagle Pass, did not respond to a request for comment.
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