The once quiet Texas town of Eagle Pass has been overrun by a swarm of agents and officers as part of Governor Greg Abbott's war on immigrants at the southern border of the United States.
Jessie Fuentes stands during a vigil on August 7 organized by Eagle Pass residents to protest Gov. Greg Abbot’s policies and remember migrants who died crossing the Rio Grande. Fuentes owns a kayaking business in Eagle Pass, which he started after retiring to offer tours of the river. According to Manuel Ortiz, Fuentes is a deeply spiritual man and a lover of nature. He sees Abbot’s barriers as a violation of life, both of people and of the natural world. “What the government is doing here is killing the river… They are destroying our community.” (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)
This once quiet town is now awash with border agents, police and soldiers, a result of the Texas governor's war on immigrants.
“When you approach Eagle Pass from San Antonio, there’s nothing for miles around… and then you hear the helicopters.”
That's how Ortiz describes the small Texas town that has now become a flashpoint in the ongoing fight over immigration policy. What was once "a town of passage," Ortiz says, has now been overrun, and not by immigrants.
“Everywhere you look you see police, border agents, soldiers,” says Ortiz, who describes setting up his laptop at a local Starbucks to attend a press conference on the situation at the border. “It was full of police and agents. So I had to sit outside,” he explains.
The scene Ortiz describes is the result of Governor Abbott's increasingly brutal policies aimed at stemming the flow of migrants arriving at the southern border, most of whom are women, children, mothers and fathers fleeing dire conditions in their home countries.
Manuel Ortiz, a sociologist, journalist and documentary filmmaker for Ethnic Media Services and Peninsula 360 Press, reports that even those who favor strong border security find Governor Abbot's new policies too extreme.
Ortiz’s photos, taken during a recent trip to the region, paint a bleak picture of the hope and desperation driving migrants on one side and the brutal measures championed by officials including Abbott and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on the other. Floating spiked barriers, buzzsaws and barbed wire line stretches of the Rio Grande separating Eagle Pass from Piedras Negras on the Mexican side, while around the scorched ground lies the detritus of passing migrants: tattered shoes, empty water bottles.
An exhausted three-year-old boy looks up at a state trooper, while his father and mother, their faces sunburned, crouch in the shade of a tree and assure him that they will bring him food. They wait, hopeful but uncertain.
This is a community with deep, historic ties that transcend the border, Ortiz says, ties that won’t be severed by floating death traps and barbed wire — images one would normally associate with places like the DMZ separating North and South Korea. In fact, he says, Eagle Pass residents are fighting back, with even former Abbot supporters now saying his policies have gone too far.
People like Jessie Fuentes, who runs a kayaking business in Eagle Pass, or Mother Isabel Turcio, director of Casa Frontera Digna in Piedras Negras — which shelters and feeds up to 100 migrants a day — are organizing to protest measures they call inhumane; measures that inflict bodily harm on exhausted and impoverished people who — like generations before them — were seeking refuge, safety and a chance at a better life in the United States.
“This country was built by immigrants,” Ortiz says. “And what Abbot is doing is treating immigrants as enemies. He is waging a war against immigrants, who are the very people who built this country.”
Floating barriers topped with spikes and interspersed with circular saw blades line stretches of the Rio Grande River that separate Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The barriers, which were recently linked to the discovery of two bodies, are part of increasingly harsh measures being taken by Texas Gov. Greg Abbot. (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)Many of the migrants are women, children, mothers and fathers. According to Ortiz, they arrive full of hope, after arduous journeys, believing that once on U.S. soil they will find refuge, which is often not a given, as many are detained and deported within 24 hours, while others face arrest on trespassing charges, are jailed for up to two weeks and then sent back across the border. (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)“When people cross the river, sometimes they lose their shoes,” Ortiz says. “I saw migrants with only one shoe or no shoes at all. So, I started taking pictures of what people leave behind on the road. Sometimes the shoes are so worn out… migrants find other ones along the way. There are face masks and water bottles. There are a lot of shoes.” (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)Mother Isabel Turcio runs Casa Frontera Digna Piedras Negras, a shelter that shelters and feeds up to 100 migrants a day. Turcio joined a vigil in Eagle Pass held just 6 or 10 feet from the Rio Grande. Participants placed white flowers in honor of those who died crossing the river. “This is what the border looks like,” Ortiz says. “It’s ugly.” (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)Eagle Pass residents hold signs reading Rest in Peace, in honor of Felecita Lucrecia, who died trying to cross the border. “It’s a tricky river,” Ortiz says — shallow in parts, but with riptides and places where the depth can suddenly change. Migrants can sometimes succumb to heat stroke while crossing, while Abbot’s barriers are in shallower sections, forcing migrants to cross in deeper water. (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)Few people in Eagle Pass advocate for open borders, Ortiz says. But there is a “difference between a controlled border and the war zone that exists now.” The army of agents and officers, he adds, are not there to stop drug traffickers, they are there to intimidate children, mothers, fathers… and the aggression is not only against migrants, people in Eagle Pass are also being affected. (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)This family is from Ecuador, the only migrants Ortiz met from that country. (Most, he says, were Venezuelan.) They told Ortiz they traveled 26 days to reach the U.S. border. The boy is 3 years old. He was so hungry and thirsty, Ortiz explained, adding that the parents told him how U.S. border agents threw water bottles at them as they crossed the river. The empty bottles are visible on the father’s side. Above them stands a Texas State Police officer, watching them as they wait for border agents to arrive. The family was arrested for trespassing, Ortiz says. (Credit: Manuel Ortiz)
This note was originally published on Ethnic Media Services, and you can check it by clicking here.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, ayou administeredred by the CaliFornia State Library.
