While Dr. Sergio Lira was recently in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican city on the banks of the Rio Grande River, he saw what he said was about 1,800 Venezuelans sprawled out across a stretch of hot concrete. He watched as they waited to be processed by border officials and closed their eyes to take quick naps on the sidewalk.
Lira, president of the Greater Houston League of United Latin American Citizens, said since Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 – a border security initiative meant to curb the then-rise in crossings – obstacles that threaten asylum seekers’ and migrants’ safety have increased.
Concerns from Democrat lawmakers and immigration advocates particularly grew earlier this month as Abbott’s latest addition to his initiative was a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys installed in the river. This floating barrier came under scrutiny amid reports the structure and barrel wrapped in razor wire caused a rise in injuries and left border officers struggling to reach those who needed help.
“It’s almost like they are trying to prevent cattle from crossing a fence.”
“It’s almost like they are trying to prevent cattle from crossing a fence,” Lira said. “It’s just a step in the wrong direction; it’s very inhumane and takes border security to a different level, preventing people from seeking asylum or even entering the country.”
Dr. Amanda Venta, an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Youth and Family Studies Lab at the University of Houston, said on top of having to navigate harsher border security measures, migrants and asylum seekers arrive in Mexico already having endured difficulties along the way.
Venta leads an ongoing study at the university that evaluates the effect of trauma experienced before and during the border-crossing process on migrants’ and asylums’ physical and mental health. Many of the people she has spoke with throughout her work were robbed, assaulted, suffered physical injuries, or separated from their family members.
The impact of these incidents on their physical and mental well-being is then compounded by the “bottleneck” or time it takes at the border to get a processing appointment.
“They are living in informally arranged tents with no running water, without air conditioning, and they’re open to the elements,” she said. “They often live-in big groups where it’s difficult to control the danger.”
Venta said while the researchers conducted interviews earlier this spring, she saw migrants and asylum seekers fainting and dehydrated.
They spoke with 400 adults from Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Cuba and Mexico for the study. Other research showed that 60 percent of people (including some children and adolescents) arriving or already settled in the United States had clinically significant symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, she said.
“People and politicians don’t want to pay attention to the health of people they think are acting illegally,” Venta said. “When they’re acting completely within the system to seek asylum at our border.”
On Monday, The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas after allowing Abbott time to remove the water barricade. It argued that the barrier violated U.S. and Mexico treaties and the federal Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act as neither the governor nor the Texas Department of Public Safety received the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval before construction.
Abbott remained defiant, blaming the Biden Administration’s open-border policies as the reason Texas needed the barrier and continued to insist that it was the state’s constitutional right to keep it installed.
Jeronimo Cortina, associate professor of political science and the director of Faculty Research Initiatives at Population Health at the University of Houston, said that the lawsuit notably mentioned nothing about how Abbott was engaging with and implementing immigration policy.
“It is worrisome when you see these problematic actions that border on human rights abuse because we are supposed to be a country that respects human rights,” he said. “This is not a new movie; we’ve seen this movie before. The problem is we’re implementing a harsh version of the same policy over and over again.”
Cortina said when the case goes to court, what should be determined is the federal and local state governments’ authority in the situation. Although Congress holds more control over immigration matters, it has not yet forcibly removed the buoys from the river. He said as the situation progresses, there could be a chance it heads to the Supreme Court.
“These efforts are just creating more dangerous, precarious situations, pushing those coming in to risk their lives because there’s no humane way to enter now,” Lira said.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
