What Texas Should Learn From Arizona’s Border Failure
By Laiken Jordahl
Imagine a beautiful, flowing river, teeming with birds and wildlife. Families gather along the banks laughing, grilling, playing music and napping in the sun. A dip in the cool water keeps the brutal Texas heat at bay. The river invigorates, offering a reminder that you’re alive and all of this is a gift.
This has been the reality for border residents on the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo for generations. It’s a river with two names and two countries, but one people who depend on its lifegiving waters. The river, after all, is why these communities exist in the first place.
The river also sustains a true biological wonderland, providing habitat and sustenance to more than 400 species of birds and some of the most incredible biodiversity in the United States.
Try to access the Rio Grande today and you may think you’ve wandered into a warzone. Coils of stacked concertina wire line its banks for miles, with thousands of razor-sharp spikes ready to ensnare the skin, fur or feathers of any creature who tries to wander through.
Border communities like Eagle Pass, Texas, have seen their public parks seized by the state and staked out with Humvees and fatigued soldiers armed to the teeth. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border force recently erected a wall of shipping containers adorned with military-grade razor-wire straight through the town’s main riverfront park, cutting off access to the Rio Grande.
Abbott also deployed what he calls a “floating wall” through the middle of this binational river. This is a lethal obstacle with buoys joined by circular saw blades, underwater netting and weights intended to snag and drown border crossers.
Critics have labeled it a “drowning device.” The Department of Justice is suing to force its removal. But Abbott sees it as a great chance for a photo op and held a press conference there last month.
This has become a familiar scene for border residents. We’re used to politicians storming into our communities with armadas of security, a mouthful of fearsome words, and a polished podium. They get their soundbite and fly back to their suburban mansions neat and tidy, without looking a single border resident in the eyes.
While border security doesn’t fall under the purview of state government, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Abbott have tried to make names for themselves by embracing fearmongering rhetoric and upping the cruelty ante.
I saw the trail of carnage left behind when Ducey built a border wall out of shipping containers through some of Arizona’s most biologically sensitive landscapes. His crews plowed over ancient oak trees, bladed sweeping grassland wilderness, and bulldozed new roads through designated critical habitat for endangered jaguars.
Ducey finally removed the containers, after the Justice Department sued, but the damage from his publicity stunt will take generations to heal, and Arizona taxpayers are stuck with the $200 million bill. He got his tough-talking photo op, terrorized rural border communities and wildlife, and sped back to Phoenix before the sun set.
This calamitous border saga wound to a close when Ducey backed down in the face of the federal lawsuit and protesters put their bodies in front of construction equipment and camped at the site in sub-freezing temperatures. But we’ll be left to deal with the consequences for decades to come.
Ducey’s border folly in Arizona was heartless and destructive. What Abbott is doing along the Rio Grande in Texas is an order of magnitude worse.
Where families once picnicked along the river, children are now suffering lacerations from the razor wire traps. At least four people drowned in Eagle Pass last month, including an infant. Just weeks ago, a pregnant woman miscarried her baby while entangled in concertina wire.
According to a Texas Department of Public Safety medic and whistleblower, troopers have been ordered to “push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande.” Recently two more bodies were found in the Rio Grande — one stuck in the orange buoys of the floating wall and another just upstream.
Abbott’s strategy here is clear: Inflict the maximum amount of suffering on the most vulnerable people by turning the Rio Grande into a death trap. People dying is part of the plan.
And it’s not just vulnerable asylum seekers who are being harmed. Amid this historic wave of extreme heat, a wall of concertina wire now separates wildlife from their water source. Deer, bobcats, javelinas and black bears will be unable to access the river, blocked by the razor wire.
Abbott is transforming south Texas’s lifeblood and cherished natural heritage into a death trap for people and other animals alike. All this for a photo op.
In Arizona Ducey gave up on his border stunt when it became clear he’d lose in court. Abbott should reverse course without waiting for a judge to make him, before more people and wildlife die.
Laiken Jordahl is the Center for Biological Diversity’s Southwest conservation advocate.
