By: Enoch Yeo
On Thursday, Governor Gregory Abbott decided to place a barrier in the Rio Grande to prevent border-crossing into America.
By Enoch Yeo
June 12, 2023
Texas will attempt to stop clandestine border-crossing by placing a floating barrier in the Rio Grande River.
The barrier will be constructed with inflatable four-foot wide buoys and will cover about 1,000 feet of the river. Although it will not cover the whole border between Texas and Mexico, Mr. Abbot declared that the buoys are easy to move around and even expand.
Eagle Pass, a small city through which many migrate to the United States, was claimed by Texas officials to be a popular location for border crossing.
Mr. Abbot said, “We can put mile after mile after mile of these buoys, when we’re dealing with gatherings of one hundred or one thousand, one of the goals is to slow down and deter as many of them as possible.”
To help local officials, Mr. Abbot set barriers in the water off Eagle Pass. This action was welcomed by law enforcement, since many cross there each year.
“If this means less people will be crossing illegally through the heart of Eagle Pass, we support it,” said Rolando Salinas Jr., the mayor of Eagle Pass “We want to avoid any interruption to our international bridges and our downtown businesses.”
The governors of Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, and other states have also sent their local police to Texas to help with the effort to stop unauthorized migration into the state.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, also took credit for flying three dozen immigrants to Sacramento, California to combat Californian Democrats. Texas and other Republican states scolded and criticized the federal government and even the president for not stopping unauthorized migration.
Sources:
Goodman, J. David and Sandoval, Edgar, Texas Will Place a Floating Barrier Between U.S. and Mexico, New York Times, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/texas-abbott-border-wall.html