While Abbott Talks of “Murder,” Migrants Die

Crosses in Eagle Pass for migrants who have died trying to enter the U.S. (courtesy of Eagle Pass Border Coalition)

Republican rhetoric on immigration has grown increasingly violent during Greg Abbott's seven years in office. On a right-wing radio show last Thursday, Abbott made a typically inflammatory comment, seeming to express a desire to "murder" immigrants from Mexico.

"The only thing that we are not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border – because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder," Abbott told NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.

Abbott got the attention he wanted. Texas Democrats described the governor as "bloodthirsty" and said he and his fellow Texas Republicans "have no morality or humanity." U.S. House Rep. Jasmine Crockett produced "a list of people my Governor appears to think it should be legal to kill – anyone crossing the border, anyone experiencing pregnancy complications who needs emergency medical care." Beto O'Rourke wrote, "The governor of Texas says he'd kill more immigrants if it weren't illegal."

The next day, Abbott held a press conference and said everyone was overreacting. "I was asked to point out where the line is drawn about what would be illegal and I pointed out something that is obviously illegal," said the governor, who is an attorney.

Abbott then traveled to Deer Park, near Houston, for a campaign event Friday night to support Texas House Rep. Briscoe Cain. There, Abbott bragged that he had ordered the Texas Military Department and Texas National Guard two days earlier to seize a 2½-mile stretch of the border near Eagle Pass, including the city's Shelby Park. U.S. Border Patrol agents had been using the park to process migrants entering the area. The National Guard troops set up fences and expelled the Border Patrol agents.

"We are not allowing Border Patrol on that property anymore," Abbott told a crowd of supporters in Deer Park. "We said, 'We've had it.' We're not going to let this happen anymore."

As Abbott spoke, two groups of immigrants were preparing to cross the Rio Grande from the bank opposite Shelby Park. According to a Department of Justice court filing Jan. 15, Eagle Pass Border Patrol agents received a call from their counterparts on the Mexican side of the river, stating that two men were struggling on the American side of the river near the Shelby Park boat ramp and that three migrants, a woman and her two children, had drowned near the boat ramp an hour earlier. A Border Patrol supervisor went to the gate manned by Texas National Guard officers and was told that he would not be allowed to enter the park, even in an emergency. In a pair of statements on Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. House Rep. Henry Cuellar said the National Guard "physically barred" Border Patrol. Within hours, authorities on the Mexican side of the river found the bodies of three people – a mother and her two children, ages 8 and 10. They rescued the two men who they said had been struggling near the boat ramp.

In a statement, the National Guard denied that they had an opportunity to save the migrants who drowned. The statement did not appear to deny the charge that it had barred federal authorities from performing their constitutional duties.

The Biden administration repeated the DHS's description of events in a statement of its own over the weekend, implicitly blaming the deaths of the woman and her children on Abbott. "While we continue to gather facts about the circumstances of these tragic deaths, one thing is clear: Governor Abbott's political stunts are cruel, inhumane, and dangerous," the statement read. "U.S. Border Patrol must have access to the border to enforce our laws."

Before the Texas National Guard took over Shelby Park, it had been chosen as the site of a memorial to migrants, scheduled for the same weekend that the woman and her kids drowned. Organizers had placed 700 wooden crosses in a field in the park to remember those who died crossing the border last year. With the state takeover of the park, the memorial was canceled.