The deaths of two people near a floating barrier installed by Texas officials on the Rio Grande will do nothing to stop people attempting to make the illegal crossing into the US, according to migrants and activists along the border.
The buoys and razor wire installed along the river on the orders of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, have “done nothing to stop migration”, said Sister Isabel Turcios, director of the Frontera Digna migrant shelter across the river in Piedras Negras, Mexico.
“People are indignant about the way migrants are being treated,” she said. “There’s no respect for human life. These are like traps meant for animals.”
The Texas public safety department told Mexico’s foreign ministry on Wednesday that one body had been found caught up in the 1,000-foot line of buoys near Eagle Pass, but state officials later claimed the person had drowned miles upriver. Another body – identified as that of a 20-year old Honduran man – was later found about three miles downriver from the buoys.
The US justice department has sued Texas to remove the barrier which Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has denounced as “inhumane”. But despite the outrage, migrants continue to head north in the hope of making it into the US, said Turcios. About 200 people are staying at the Frontera Digna shelter in Piedras Negras, she said – around the average for this time of year.
“Many people keep arriving here every day,” said the nun. “In spite of the alarm caused by the buoys, the number of people arriving here is the same as always. Particularly mothers with children, small children.”
Sister Isabel said almost immediately after the obstacle was installed in July, migrants quickly found a new route. “They cross the river very carefully away from the buoys and then must walk three hours to find a gap in the razor wire they can cross through. Then they hand themselves in to be processed as asylum seekers.”
Migration experts have long noted that punitive attempts to block migration corridors simply force people to take longer – and often more dangerous – routes.
New rules imposed by the Biden administration in May make many people crossing the border this way ineligible for asylum. The administration insists they use the mobile app, CBP One, to make an asylum appointment at an official port of entry. But the app has been notoriously glitchy and many migrants can wait months before getting an appointment. A federal judge has blocked Biden’s new asylum rules.
Many migrants arrive at the Frontera Digna shelter one day and set out for the river the next morning.
Mari, a 32-year-old Venezuelan, sobbed as she told how three friends she had made at the shelter set out on Thursday to cross the river. “One of them had her five-year-old daughter with her. I’m so scared something is going to happen to that little girl.”
Mari is traveling with her 13-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter. She asked the Guardian to not use her full name because of threats against her family in Venezuela.
“I’m here alone with my children,” she said. “I’m so scared of crossing the river – that the water will rise and I won’t be able to hold on to both my children at once and that the river will carry them away.”
The news of the drowned Honduran boy has terrified her. For now, she wants to stay at the shelter and see if she can get a CBP One appointment.
Mexico has already sent Washington two diplomatic notes complaining about the barriers, and López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, has said his government would act to have the barriers removed as they violate “our sovereignty and human rights”.
But despite Amlo’s rhetoric, Mexican migration agents have also been accused of routine cruelty towards migrants passing through the country.
Mari said when she tried to take a bus to Piedras Negras, in the town of Nueva Rosita, three hours to the south, migration officials stopped every migrant from boarding and asked for bribes as much as US$300 to allow them to continue north.
She and several other migrant families with children were stranded in the bus station for five days. They cleaned the terminal and bathrooms so staff wouldn’t kick them out into the heat, which surpassed 42C (107F) most days.
“It was horrible,” she says. “[Migration agents] insulted us and mocked us,” until transport company employees quietly slipped them on to buses north.
Mari’s main hope now is prayer.
“I just ask for God’s intervention to get us an appointment with CBP One quickly,” she said. “We want to follow the laws of the United States and to do everything correctly and be there legally.
“But when CBP One isn’t working for everyone, it pushes us to desperation, to risk crossing the river, even with the buoys there.”
