By Raúl Antonio Capote on June 13, 2023
Texas governor’s million dollar Floating Border Wall
It is hard to imagine it could get any worse but another calamitous situation has been created at the U.S.-Mexico border, due to the new policies implemented by Joe Biden’s administration, which have forced hundreds of migrants to wait on the Mexican side.
One month after the end of the controversial Title 42, Washington points to the reduction in the number of people arrested crossing the border irregularly as an achievement.
During the month of May, the U.S. government deported more than 38,000 people, including Mexicans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.
Those who arrive at the border after walking thousands of kilometers, many of them after crossing the hell of the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, are forced to wait for weeks and even months to get an appointment at the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and be able to request asylum, according to a recently published study by the Human Rights Campaign, and reported in La Opinión.
Migrants at the border are exposed to robbery, kidnapping and extortion by criminal groups.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Thursday that he will soon install a “new buoy barrier” on the Texas-Mexico border to prevent “the record level of illegal immigration, weapons and deadly drugs entering Texas”. The first 300 meters of the floating barrier will be deployed near Eagle Pass, in Maverick County.
The new anti-immigrant laws signed by Abbott allow the governor of Texas to coordinate and execute border security pacts with other states without the approval of the U.S. Congress.
One of the measures expands the authority of Border Patrol agents to search and arrest felony suspects and authorizes the military to use unmanned aircraft to monitor the border.
It also designates Mexican criminal groups and drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in the state of Texas.
Separately, the governors of Virginia, West Virginia and South Carolina on Wednesday joined the growing list of Republican leaders sending National Guard soldiers to the border to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing, according to The Associated Press.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced they are sending soldiers and airmen to support Gov. Greg Abbott’s $4 billion “Operation Lone Star.”
Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, an aspiring candidate for the U.S. presidency, noted for his anti-immigrant policies, announced that he will send more than 1,100 state law enforcement agents and members of the National Guard to the Texas-Mexico border. The sum total of this escalation can only be viewed as a declaration of war against immigrants.
Raúl Antonio Capote is a professor, researcher, journalist and special correspondent to Cuba en Resumen
Source: Cuba en Resumen