Texas Governor Greg Abbot has installed and defended buoys, equipped with saw-like blades that can slice and maim, deployed in the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing the border.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Abbott over the floating barrier, and the legality behind the buoys remains under scrutiny. In a tweet, Abbott said he has than 300 pages in a legal brief explaining the rationale behind the buoys. His office has stated that these marine barriers deter river crossings and direct migrants to a bridge as a safer alternative than drowning.
In an excellent article in Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson writes that “It’s obviously morally abominable to booby-trap the border with razors.” He documents some social media posts by commenters defending the buoys — “Do not try to cross over into our country illegally and then there’s no problem with injuries or harm, This is the right think to do to stop the invasion. More please, Stop coming here illegally. How about that!” and more along that ilk.
Any reasonable person should consider these buoys barbaric. These sorts of callous comments, masked by a veil of social media anonymity, are indeed cruel and lacking in empathy.
A wounded animal can violently lash out when aid is rendered, due to fright from its vulnerable nature. Similarly, when a crisis affecting the entire American nation has been completely ignored, I think it’s awful, but not surprising, when citizens exercise a latent atavism, that presents itself as an ignorant disregard for the very real challenges facing immigrants seeking a better way of life. When fear of the unknown takes over, emotions run high and can be crystallized into a bigotry that wouldn’t exist if an attempt to rectify the solution wasn’t at the very bottom of our legislators agendas.
Concerns regarding our nation’s handling of the longstanding border crisis are not unfounded. Any suffering or harm inflicted while navigating to a new land is a tragedy — in 2021, over 800 migrants died just that year trying to cross the border.
Following the expiration of COVID-era border restriction policy 42 this May, border towns in Arizona and Texas pleaded as makeshift camps popped up and social services were pushed to the brink. Democrats are disappointed that actions by President Joe Biden will actually encourages people turned away from the border to try for entry again.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 99,546 encounters between ports of entry along the Southwest border in June of 2023, a 42% decrease from May 2023. In any other country, this would be a crisis beyond comprehension. In America, these numbers are pedestrian, and actually trending downward from historic highs.
Given the overwhelming nature of the border crisis, I can, not agree with, but at least understand the casual cruelty displayed by those defending the buoys. Former President Donald Trump received widespread criticism for his immigration policies, particularly for the enthusiastic chants of ‘Build That Wall’, but whether you agree or disagree with that stance, at least it was an attempt to address the border problem that has been neglected for decades. And despite the perceived xenophobia claimed ad nauseam by the media and political commentators, Trump consistently advocated for big, open doors on his ‘30 foot wall paid for by Mexico’ and praised the virtues of legal immigration through a more controlled system than the current ‘free-for-all, borders are meaningless’ mantras by the left.
There is no panacea for US-Mexico immigration policy. The contrasting economic conditions between the two border countries are unparalleled globally. Robinson writes ‘We just need to figure out how to integrate newcomers into our society successfully, as we have done for hundreds of years,’ but the sheer numbers of immigrants and the decades-long duration of this crisis make this banal statement easy to advocate for, but much more difficult to make it happen policy-wise.
Anyone who wishes to invoke the ‘huddled masses’ coming through Ellis Island as a call to arms to accept immigrants from across the globe needs a statistical reality check — Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million immigrants passed through the most famous immigration portal. Now, America regularly receives more than 1.5 million immigrants each year. Whether you are for or against mass immigration to the United States, these influxes are not comparable.
There should no outlet for flippant glee at any form of suffering inflicted upon those seeking escape or asylum from their own country, especially when that harm is enacted by American policies via buoys or barbed wire. On the flip side, when a problem has continued to exist for half a century, with no clear solutions being posited by anyone in a position of authority, it’s hardly shocking that the discontented masses will, for even something as barbaric as a saw-buoy, claim it as their salvation.
