The Chronicle reported that emails sent from a trooper within the Texas Department of Public Safety detail treatment the officer called inhumane.
The July 3 correspondence “discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande,” according to the report.
According to the emails discussed in the Chronicle, the pregnant teen trapped in the razor wire was having a miscarriage and “doubled over in pain.” Also detailed in the email reviewed by the Houston paper was “a 4-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers,” and a teenage male who broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire before being carried by his father.
According to the leaked email, state troops on the border have also been ordered to not provide water to migrants, even when they are clearly suffering from heat-related illness. The trooper, who sent the email to a superior officer, referred to the incidents in question as “in humane [sic]”, and called for policy changes to avoid such treatment.
The Dallas Morning News reported that the name of the officer who sent the email is Nicholas Wingate. According to the paper, Wingate said he felt conflicted between his official mission and the human toll it has taken.
“I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star,” Wingate wrote, according to the Morning News. “I believe we have stepped over a line into the in humane (sic). We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”“We can not comprehend their desperation, their urgency.” - Almas Muscatwalla, Dallas Responds
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Many lawmakers and voters who favor such harsh, potentially lethal measures — including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recently announced buoy system intended to block swimmers in the Rio Grande — miss a key element that should be more apparent, says Almas Musctwalla. As the border and government liaison for Dallas Responds, Muscatwalla aids a group that welcomes and assists migrants once they’ve arrived from one of the ICE detention centers in Texas.
“This situation tells us that they [migrants] do not have another choice. They do not have another option. We can not comprehend their desperation, their urgency,” Muscatwalla said. “They are leaving what they know, their country, their home, in order to come to ours. I’m an immigrant myself, and my story is very different from those at the border right now, but I can empathize. It’s not as easy as simply packing up your bags and just deciding to go into a new country where you’re not going to be accepted.”
The report from the border has made waves throughout Texas, with some of the state’s top politicians weighing in.
Abbott, in a statement provided on Tuesday to the Observer by spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris, ignored the injuries noted in the Chronicle report and deflected blame to President Joe Biden.
“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally," the statement reads in part. "The absence of razor wire and other deterrence strategies encourages migrants to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry, while making the job of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers more dangerous and difficult."
“If true, this is unthinkable. We can secure our border and enforce our laws without resorting to this kind of inhumane cruelty. These barbaric tactics are not who we are as Texans or Americans,” tweeted U.S. Congressman Colin Allred of Dallas, who included a link to the Chronicle report.
On Tuesday morning, Texas state Rep. Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Democrat from Mesquite, tweeted, “From a pregnant mother having a miscarriage while trapped in barbed wire to drownings of children & outright refusals to provide life-saving water in extreme Texas heat, the treatment of our fellow humans on the TX-Mexico border by DPS is unconscionable and unacceptable.”
The Chronicle report included a response from Victor Escalon, a DPS director, stating, “Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. "As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”
Water and medical aid is vital, but according to Muscatwalla, another key element will be needed in great measure from state officials and border troops for any sort of peace to be maintained at the border.
“You can stay caught up in your politics and in your calling some people legal and some people illegal,” she said. “But there has to be a way in which we look at each other as human, and not as a stranger or as someone who is different from me. If you can not empathize with the suffering of another human being, you can’t call yourself a human being. That’s a basic requirement.”
