Officer Details ‘Inhumane’ Border Policy Shocked Greg Abbott

“I believe we have crossed an inhumane line,” wrote one police officer about Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative.

Officers objected to Gov. Greg Abbott’s border patrol policies, one of which called them “inhumane” as they were ordered to push young children and breastfeed babies back into the Rio Grande.

“Officers working for Governor Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push young children and nursing infants back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extremely hot weather, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety official who described the act as ‘inhumane,’” San Antonio Express-News exclusively reported.

You might think you’ve heard everyone who could possibly hear about Abbott’s lack of humanity (like how half a million Texans have lost their Medicaid coverage since April), but sadly, you haven’t. Some of the accounts listed in the email from Officer to supervisor are recently reported incidents reviewed by Hearst Newspapers.

As part of Abbott’s border initiative, Texas has deployed buoys and barbed wire on the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass. The officer “suggested that Texas had set up razor wire-wrapped barrel ‘trap’ in high-water, low-visibility sections of the river” which had “increased the risk of drowning by forcing migrants into deeper sections of the river.”

The police email called for several policy changes including “moving barrels and revoking the withhold water directive.”

Yes, officers were told to hold the water, according to this police officer, but Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considin countered that this was policy.

“Due to the extremely hot temperature, the order not to give water to the people should be immediately canceled as well,” the policeman wrote, then added: “I believe we have crossed an inhumane line.”

If work pushing suffering humans, including children and nursing babies, back into the Rio Grande in 100+ degree temperatures knowing they are exhausted and in need of water seems soul-destroying and savage, that is because it is. It is so bad that the troops question orders and try to avoid carrying them out.

These stories are heartbreaking but need to be heard. Here are just two of the four mentioned in the exclusive.

The email says that on June 30, Texas Rangers were ordered to push back a group of people, including a 4-year-old girl, who was trying to cross the cable.

Then this. On June 25, troops summoned command to question orders to push a group of “tired, hungry and tired” men including several young children and nursing babies “back into the water to go to Mexico.”

Imagine having this in your soul: Troops knew this action would have the real possibility of an exhausted person drowning, and therefore felt it was not the right thing to do.

So: “They called command again and expressed their concern and were given orders to ‘tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and drive away,’ the cop wrote. After they left, other police worked with the Border Patrol to provide treatment to the migrants, the email said.

The email revealed new information about previously reported cases of drowning, “included a mother and at least one of her two children… a DPS vessel found the mother and one of her children… later pronounced dead in hospital. The second child was never found, the email said.

“I raised the issue of @GovAbbott’s outrage over dinner with @SecBlinken. I read him the title and first paragraph of the @ExpressNews article and urged the Government to intervene — and to remove the death trap that Abbott has set in the name of human rights,” Rep. Joaquin Castro wrote above story.

On June 26, the Mexican government sent a diplomatic complaint to the US through Abbott’s floating barrier.

Neither party has yet succeeded in “fixing” the border problem, but one thing that differentiates the two parties is that the Democratic Party is trying to prioritize human rights. They don’t always get it right and don’t care who is wrong. But even with all that said, Greg Abbott has taken things so abhorrent, inhumane that border officials object.

As of now, there has been no word from the federal government on how they will try to stop this latest attack on humanity by Abbott. One thing we do know are House Republicans have actively tried to make things worse at the border by refusing to provide administrative resources and funds to address the migrant crisis. Part of the Biden administration’s plan involves the Pentagon sending 1,500 troops to support the Border Patrol, to which Greg Abbott responded that they don’t need 1,500 troops to support the border, they need more than that and he further accused Biden of sending 1,500 troops to work on paperwork. (Strange framing, unsupported by evidence.)

Abbott’s 2022 executive order on the border “appears to use force of war as a basis for arresting migrants and asylum seekers,” according to an analysis by Only Security.

Morally, this is where Republicans support migrants, like Beto O’Rouke observed, “Abbott you thug. Murderer. Ghost. People are dying when you play war games against helpless mothers and children. Long live my ass pro!!”

Game of war against women and children.

Ordering law enforcement officials to shove a nursing baby back into the water shows an alarming loss of humanity. The “Nuremberg defense” of “I was only following orders” is neither an acceptable moral defense nor an unreliable and dubious legal defense.

We have more than enough information at this point to determine that people who claim abortion is murder but deny that pushing exhausted, nursing babies back into the Rio Grande are murder really don’t care about “life” at all.

“Life” isn’t really a value in this conservative Republican Party; it is simply a tool used to defeat opposition, oppress women and minorities, and maliciously and willfully neglect for the sake of inhuman cruelty.

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