House Democrats from Texas went after Gov. Greg Abbott ® on Sunday over a standoff at the U.S.-Mexico border between state and federal law enforcement, accusing him of inciting potential violence and making border safety a purely political issue.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) described Abbott’s border security program as a “disaster” and part of the “most virulent anti-immigrant sentiment in a generation.”
The governor appeared to ignore a Supreme Court order last month that allowed federal Border Patrol to remove barriers erected by state law enforcement. Abbott shrugged off the order, claiming that state law “supersedes” federal.
Dozens of GOP governors have backed Abbott in the fight, with some pledging material assistance, including National Guard troops.
Does someone know WTF is actually going on? Or has a link to an article that actually tries to explain it properly instead of just injecting political bias?
Here’s the few facts I was able to get:
There is money earmarked by congress to build a border wall. That money can’t be used for anything else.
Biden doesn’t want to build the wall. He thinks it’s a waste of money and the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Somewhere in Texas a wall has been built, (by who? using what money?)
There’s been back and fourth in the courts on the topic. One ruling is that the Federal Border Patrol isn’t obligated to build the wall.
The Federal Border Patrol has in the past removed border walls, I think, I’m not clear on that one.
The Federal Border Patrol wants access to the place in Texas where a wall has been built. (So they can tear it down?)
Some texans official (don’t know which groups) is physically preventing the Federal Border Patrol from gaining access.
Biden was hoping, that if the money is not spent then it could be repurposed for other things. I assume, this would happen via a congressional spending bill asking the money to be repurposed since Biden can’t unilaterally do this.
So, those are facts I know, here are some things that I’d like to know don’t know:
Which government entity is on the Texas side. I don’t know who built the wall and with what money.
I don’t know the official position of the Federal Border Patrol at different points in time on the issue.
I do have some info about Biden’s official position (The wall is a waste of money better spent elsewhere). I’d still like to know if that position has been consistent over time. Especially in the context of removing the wall (that’s spending more money to undo something that’s already been done, unless the concern is that maintenance costs on the wall makes it more cost effective to remove it).
In terms of speculation for “true motives”.
I think it’s clear that Biden’s stated position is as true a motive is you can get from a politician. They just don’t think that walls/fences is an effective immigration control mechanism. They’re really easy to defeat.
But if they tried to take down fences that have already been built, then I see two possible secondary agendas:
The federal border patrol is having a jurisdiction hissy fit. They consider the border wall to be their responsibility and they’ve been told not to build any, but some other government agency has built one, so they move it to get rid of it to show them who’s boss.
If a wall gets build, it might support in people’s mind that a wall was needed. This goes against Biden’s political narrative.
I’m thinking this whole fiasco is 85% the federal border patrol having a hissy fit and 15% Texas having a huge illegal immigrant problem and they “as a whole” know that a fence won’t fix anything But they gotta do something. They can’t do nothing. And building a fence is the only not nothing thing they can figure out to do. Plus it makes the right wingers in the area happy because it supports their political narrative.
I don’t live anywhere near Texas. But I watched this youtuber who’s trying to make a forest in the middle of the desert. And this episode made it clear to me how bad the problem is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rVQlWoO3fA
Overall I’m just not convinced that it’s just a matter of populist posturing. The immigration issue affects Texas so much to the point that they’re willing to try things that are unlikely to work. But the people in charge of the border aren’t similarly motivated.
The Republican party isn’t interested in governing over the issue of immigration responsibly. They would rather exploit violence and instability at the border to continually terrorize their base into supporting an otherwise untenable fascist criminal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate choice in leadership. Mangling immigrant bodies is not the way to do it.
I’m not really sure about the whole thing honestly, but I’ve not heard any mention about a wall being removed. What I have heard is that there’s a bunch of razor wire in a river on the border that was installed by the state. A number of people have been caught in the razor wire and drowned trying to cross the border, and their corpses are still there because they’re tangled in the razor wire. The only actual dispute I’ve heard is that some federal agents wanted to remove the razor wire from the river and retrieve the corpses but state agents were blocking them from doing so.
Ok, here’s a source for that. Weird that so few articles are mentioning the specifics.
usatoday source
This is starting to make a whole lot more sense.
I can see how those buoys can actually be effective. But I wonder how expensive it would be to setup full coverage.
Also putting these on a river that serves as an international border without federal approval is some nonsense. It’s like, what’s next? Texas starts to unilaterally make trade agreements with mexico because they’re the ones at the border?
I’m not a big fan of the pulling on the hearstrings. These people are dying with or without the border fences. And presumably if they’re willing to take these risks, it’s because the situation where they come from is even worse. You can’t just simply point at the location where they end up dying and say that’s where all the evil is. If they survive the river, they can die in the desert, if they survive the desert, they can die as a vagrant. If they get picked up, they can get sent back to mexico right back where they were in at least as much danger. If they get accepted as a refugee then they become the government’s responsibility, which is not a solution that scales to the number of people that need it. That’s before you even ask the question of whether the US government should accept responsibility (which I think it should, I suspect that the US’s mismanaged war on drug is in large part to blame for the unrest in Mexico).
But the whole thing gets even more complicated because Mexican cartels are responsible for these illegal border crossing attempts. And they’re likely lying to the immigrants about the benefits of crossing illegally. People may be risking their lives not knowing that what they’re doing could kill them and that what they get in the end may not even be that much better than where they come from.
What you don’t want is a situation where people are incentivized to risk their lives in illegal boarder crossings so that they can skip the line to obtain refugee status, taking spots away from people doing it the legal and safe way. That increases the overall misery and death. And if putting evil buoys that stink of death is going to get the job done, then it might be worth it.
Except it’s not going to get the job done. And it’s on an international river. And it’s terrible optics. And they’re illegal.
Just wanted to chime in that you are the only other person I’ve seen mention this. It’s like everyone just assumes people try and cross the border for the hell of it, but despite the barriers to doing so it ends up still being the best option for these people. Maybe we should look at fixing the root of the problem, as opposed to treating people like trash.
Texas is being stupid. Source am Texan.
This is all over about a half mile or so piece of river. Razor wire, buoys, and empty shipping containers make up this “epic” wall Abbot claims. The problem is, it endangers lives to the point that the Texas border control literally watched 3 immigrants die while federal agents were refused access to help them. The feds took them to court, said you can’t interfere with federal access. Abbot said fuck off and no repercussions have happened yet.
The icing on the cake is Biden pushed for aid to the border in October, including more agents and processers., Rs said no thanks, then turned around and claimed we have a problem at the border.
Don’t forget Abbott also “joked” that he’d just have the border patrol guys shoot people if he thought they wouldn’t get charged for murder.
Good reminder! Also the threats against federal agents if they attempted to take down barriers.