Troopers under Texas Governor Greg Abbott are pushing small children,
including nursing babies, back into the Rio Grande.
And they've been ordered to avoid giving migrants water,
even with the excruciatingly hot and extreme heat.
The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass, and
it's all part of Abbott's operation Lone Star initiative.
The details are incredibly difficult to stomach, and
we know about them thanks to an email that one of these state troopers,
who is part of the public safety department had sent to his colleagues.
Basically raising concerns about the actions they're taking against these
migrants.
Now, the email is again 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 himself over at Eagle Pass.
So let's get to the reporting on this and some of the details.
The email, which the trooper sent to a superior,
suggests that Texas has set traps, or traps of razor wired-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 water.
So understand what they're doing, they have these barrels covered in wire, okay?
Here's one image, a still shot of a local news report on this.
And you can see some of the wire there,
but they also have barrels wrapped with wire in the water.
And that water has low visibility, so they can't see it.
Now, some of the migrants caught on to the fact that they were using this as
an attempt to prevent the migrants from being able to cross over.
And so what they're doing now is trying to get around those barrels, and by doing so,
they're entering even deeper territory, and some of them are drowning as a result.
Here are some more details.
According to that email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last
month caught in razor 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.
And a teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and
had to be carried by his father.
The trooper's email sheds new light on a series of previously
reported drownings in the river during a one week stretch earlier this month.
Including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal
Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.
By the way, that woman, that migrant with her two children,
she died along with one of her children.
Her second child has yet to be found.
Just absolutely heartbreaking, devastating, inhumane, and cruel.
And if it weren't for this email that was sent to a superior,
we wouldn't know about just how cruel this operation Lone Star program really is.
>> Speaker 2: So, a couple of things.
First, remember, it's an officer who's writing the email, so
this is not some human rights person, and I don't say that dismissively.
I'm just saying he's the person who presumably wants to
protect the border, but he's saying this is too much guys.
He didn't use the word barbaric, but
the description of what he's explaining is clearly barbaric.
And by the way, I know some right-wingers will think, good, you see that?
Now we're making it harder to get into the country, and
that's what we're supposed to do.
We're not supposed to just let them in.
We're supposed to put out walls and fences and maybe make them electric fences,
electrocute them, wires so they can't get through, etc.
Okay, then look at the results of your policies and
tell me you're comfortable with it.
So, one woman had a miscarriage and lost her baby.
I thought you guys were pro life.
So you don't mind?
A four-year-old died.
I'm sorry, four-year-old was unconscious and passed out and nearly died.
Other kids died drowning trying to get around the wires.
One of the kids gets stuck in the wire, his leg is very badly cut.
His dad goes to try to extricate him, and then his dad is in astrotrac.
All these stories of kids dying, pregnancies ending, etc, you okay with it?
You tell me, are you okay with it?
This is not a price I'm willing to pay.
I would rather solve it in a different way.
And we've had productive solutions that we have introduced before on the show,
and I can talk about it again, but I'm not comfortable with this.
And if you guys are, I need you to look into your souls and
definitely don't tell me that you're pro life, because this ain't pro life.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanna read an excerpt from the email itself,
as you mentioned, and you're correct, he's a trooper himself,
so he's watching what he is ordered to do.
He or she we don't know what the gender of this individual is, but this person is,
no, this goes too far.
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 inhumane.
And this person is absolutely correct about that.
By the way, you mentioned the little four-year-old.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Speaker 1: Four-year-old is succeeding in crossing over, and
the troopers push her back and tell her to go back to Mexico.
>> And I wanna give the- >> Speaker 1: And
she faints from exhaustion.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, and then eventually they have to take her to the hospital cuz
she's about to die.
So, look, I wanna give the troopers some credit, some of the troopers, because they
got an order to push all of them back into the water, which is disgusting, okay?
And a bunch of the troopers said after a while, no, we're not doing it anymore.
We got people dying here and we got kids in grave danger.
We're not gonna push them back in the water.
And so that's brave and I appreciate them doing that.
It wasn't all of them, but it was some of them.
Credit where credit is due.
>> Speaker 1: Now, Travis Considine, who serves as a spokesperson for
the department of public safety, and
this is the department that the troopers are currently operating within.
Says that there was no order to avoid giving the migrants water.
I'm gonna take that statement with a grain of salt because if you have
an actual trooper writing this email to their superior to complain about this.
I'm gonna put more credibility toward that than what the spokesperson for
this department has to say.
Now, department of public safety director Steven McCraw acknowledged
that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire.
Including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed
elevated medical attention from July 4 to July 13.
Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.
So there seems to be some admissions here.
The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling
between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants.
Right, now 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 wire and drownings and dehydration.
Except that's not at all what the department has been doing.
They have accepted the orders from Governor Greg Abbott.
They have implemented the policy.
They have put the wire and the barrels covered in wiring in the water and
they know that it's causing serious injuries.
The only reason why this statement was put out in the first place is because one of
their own troopers blew the whistle on them, well, yeah, blew the whistle on it.
Because this was an email sent to a superior and
another trooper leaked the email to the press.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, because they don't wanna murder people by pushing them back
in the water and back into the wires.
So, again, thank God for those couple of troopers who have morality and
care about life and things that are decent.
Remember guys, the people that are coming over, they're not the coyotes, they're not
the drug dealers, because those guys, once they see the troopers, they're gone.
They're not gonna get caught.
They're not trying to cross over to America anyway.
They're trying to bring people or drugs into America.
The minute they see the troopers in the wires, they're nowhere to be found.
So these are all innocent families and you can say, hey, they shouldn't cross
the border, but they're trying to do it to give their kids a better life.
So we're okay with killing them?
No, and so I got to say one more thing.
So it's Abbott that's doing this, the Republican Governor of Texas,
but Joe Biden's president.
>> Speaker 1: Yep.
>> Speaker 2: Joe Biden, are you gonna do anything about this?
And my guess is that they're not doing much about it because they think, well,
I'm getting a lot of heat for immigration.
And so maybe if I resist the barbed wires, etc, in the river,
I might get criticism and the right-wing media might hit me.
But I don't know, I don't know their motivation.
And it's relatively new, to be fair to the Biden administration.
But let's see what you got.
Are you gonna stop them or are you just gonna let them keep doing this?