A wire fence with sharp spikes is no longer the only danger facing the immigrantscoming from Mexicoto enter USA. Texas has installed over the Bravo River a “floating wall” made of spiked buoys to prevent the entry of illegals and which has caused great controversy.
“Today the installation of a new marine barrier begins,” the governor of Texas, greg abbottas part of his controversial immigration operation “Lone Star”which includes the massive transfer of immigrants to “sanctuary” cities from other states.
Abbott shared images of several trucks unloading the buoys, which already form a new barrier. The wall is made up of dozens of giant buoys, almost one meter in diameter, anchored to the bottom of the river and linked underwater by a set of nets. In total, the operation is valued at more than a million dollars.
Construction has started near the city of Eagle Passa town that borders the Mexican city of Black Stones. It is the second area with the highest entry of people. The border patrol identified in the past year up to 270,000 encounters with immigrants who had crossed the river to USA.
“We are securing the border from the border. What these buoys will allow us is to prevent people from even reaching the border,” he warned. Abbott. Added to this new floating wall are the barbed wire that already exists on the Texas bank of the river, as well as some piled up cargo shipping containers that create a physical barrier.
But this new measure has not been without controversy. Humanitarian organizations warn that this new wall could cause drowning deaths. “The state of Texas is not authorized to build border barriers, which is a function of Homeland Security,” he reproached npr Colorado State University political scientist Stephen Momme.
Likewise, it indicated that it supposes a violation of the treaties between USA and Mexico. In this sense, the Mexican Government sent a diplomatic note to Washington in which he accuses Texas of violating the bilateral water and human rights agreements with the buoys and the wire fence.
“We have already sent two very clear diplomatic notes, saying that the Treaty of 1944 and the one from 1970 (which talk about shared waters and the territorial limit)”, the Mexican foreign minister reported at the end of July, Alicia Barcena.
Faced with this diplomatic dispute, the president of the United States himself, Joe Bidenhas been forced to intervene and has filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Texas. The US Attorney’s Office urged the republican Abbott to remove the buoys due to the environmental and humanitarian risks for immigrants that said barrier entails. However, the governor of Texas has ignored this request.
