Reports show Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas constructed a floating barrier across the Rio Grande in July, and a video shared by Democrat Rep. Sylvia Garcia shows that between the orange buoys are so-called circular saws.
Garcia noted in a post on X with the footage that as the actual danger and cruelty of these buoys became apparent, the truth of the situation was unnerving.
One of the two bodies retrieved from the Rio Grande in the past few days got trapped in the floatation barrier, Mexican police reported last week.
On August 2, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations released a statement claiming a corpse had been discovered amid a chain of orange buoys.
According to a report, a second body was found approximately 3 miles up the river from the buoys.
Texas Republican Governor Abbott’s multibillion-dollar plan to fortify the U.S. border with Mexico included the installation of the barrier in the Rio Grande in July. In addition, a razor-wire fence has been installed, and trespassing arrests have been made against illegal migrants.
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris told a media outlet that claims by Mexican officials and Democrats that Texas’ water barriers were responsible for any deaths are entirely untrue.
He said that the maritime barriers discourage migrants from attempting unsafe river crossings and instead encourage them to utilize the 29 bridges that span the Texas-Mexico border. You cannot drown on a bridge. Texas will continue to take unprecedented action to react to this ongoing catastrophe and defend Texans until President Biden stands up and does his duty to secure the border.
A recent report shows Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) reportedly detected a migrant smuggler via a drone in possession of a firearm leading a group of people over the border into the United States near downtown Eagle Pass, upstream of a buoy barrier. The drone operator saw a migrant smuggler leading eleven people over the Rio Grande while wielding a long rifle.
Lieutenant Chris Olivarez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that the smuggler disappeared, and the Border Patrol apprehended the group of migrants being led by the armed smuggler and took them to a Border Patrol processing center.
