Everybody Has A Plan Until They Get Punched In The Face

“I wish people understood that leaving their home countries isn’t easy, the trek to the U.S. isn’t easy, because they’re risking death,” she said. “How desperate does one have to be to risk their lives and the lives of their children?”https://t.co/WyBXDsyX0s

— Uriel J. García (@ujohnnyg) August 7, 2023

Reality is a punch in the face.

When Magali Urbina and her husband, Hugo, bought a nearly 400-acre pecan farm along the Rio Grande in April 2021, it was supposed to be a fun retirement project. They planned to open a coffee shop, a restaurant and a glamping area on the riverbank.

Then they noticed groups of migrants walking through the orchard, some leaving trash behind. So when the Texas Department of Public Safety offered to install a chain-link fence near the riverbank last year, they welcomed the idea. The fence even had a gate with a lock so Hugo could continue fishing on the river.

But as Gov. Greg Abbott geared up his efforts to stem illegal immigration at the border, state troopers began patrolling the riverbank and National Guard members sped through their property to reach the river. Then came the rolls of concertina wire that cut off their access to the river altogether.

Urbina, a Republican who said she voted for Abbott for reelection, said the day it became too much came on a late-July afternoon when she spotted a pregnant woman cross the Rio Grande and push her way through the concertina wire. The woman’s arms were cut and bloodied. Urbina said she called nearby Border Patrol agents, who cut through the state’s fence to reach the woman.

When a few state troopers approached, the 52-year-old retired elementary school teacher sternly told them, “Back off. This is my property and she is going to get through.” An ambulance took the pregnant woman away.

They aren't the only ones concerned:

Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr., who in June agreed — without the City Council’s approval — to declare Shelby Park private property so state troopers could arrest migrants for trespassing, has recently reversed his support, saying that since he signed the agreement with the state, “things have changed, things that obviously I don't like.”

Some of the critics include troopers that Abbott sent to the border: The Department of Public Safety recently opened an internal investigation into one trooper’s claims — made in an email to a superior — that troopers had been ordered to push migrants back into the river and deny them water, and that the razor wire had seriously injured migrants.

DPS spokesperson Travis Considine said that as part of the investigation, officials are looking into allegations made by five troopers.

Pause for a lawyerly aside or two.  Abbott has state troopers arresting immigrants for trespass on private property.  The state put up a barricade of shipping containers at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, and got the city to declare the park private property so arrests for trespass could be made there. The city council recently reversed that decision.

Here's the other lawyerly aside:

The Urbinas said when they asked the DPS to remove the razor wire from their property, they were told that Abbott’s disaster declaration for the border — which Abbott signed in 2021 — allows the state to use private property to protect its borders.

Ericka Miller, a DPS spokesperson, referred questions about the Urbinas’ complaints to a news article quoting Victor Escalon, a DPS regional director for much of South Texas.

“We do everything we can to prevent crime, period,” he said. “And that’s the job.”

That sounds a lot like a "taking" to me, which the state cannot do without just compensation.

Magali Urbina, who said she’s consulted a lawyer about forcing DPS to remove the concertina wire, said no landowner likes migrants crossing through their property, but she also doesn’t support what Abbott is doing.

As there is concertina wire installed along the Urbina’s property, migrants are told to walk to the end of the property. Many make that walk which can be difficult to do through slippery rocks in the water, the current and the inclined river bank, while some find spots through the concertina wire and manage to get through.

“There’s a humane way to do it,” she said. The image of the pregnant woman bleeding near the river has stuck with her. She’s seen the bodies of drowned migrants floating in the river past their orchard. Last week, Mexican officials removed a body that had drifted into the floating barrier.

“We can’t help them all, but maybe we’re supposed to help some. Maybe that’s what God’s calling us to do,” she said on a recent afternoon as she drove her blue Cadillac Escalade near the river bank. She said she wants the Biden administration to make it safe for asylum seekers to enter the U.S. and she hopes the federal government changes immigration laws so migrants don’t have to risk their lives. 

Maybe that is what God's calling us to do.  What's that parable about the sheep and the goats, the ones who did something for the least among us, and who they really did it for? The farther you are from the border, the more these people are not...people.

It's a damned poor excuse.