In early July, the state of Texas added further restrictions on border crossings in the Rio Grande by adding buoys adorned with razor-sharp blades and barbed wire. The buoys stretch for miles right down the middle of the Rio Grande. This border security measure is a part of Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lonestar, a program meant to increase border security and enforce immigration laws at the Texas-Mexico border. It is inhumane and unfair to instate such harsh measures to keep people from crossing the border illegally. If Abbott is going to try so hard to prevent illegal border crossings, then he needs to provide legal options that are safe and accessible to migrants.
The main issue with these buoys is the safety concerns. The floating barrier has already caused two deaths and is sure to cause more as migrants continue to cross the border. The migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande likely do it out of desperation, so a barrier is not going to stop them from attempting to cross if they’re already trying to do so. Instead, the buoys only further endanger the lives of migrants in an already dangerous border crossing. It is completely unfair to intentionally put the lives of migrants at risk with the threat of drowning or being wounded by sharp objects when all they are trying to do is immigrate.
Not to mention, the state of Texas is the only government supporting Operation Lone Star’s drastic measures. The federal government filed a lawsuit against the state for building the buoys without permission at the federal level, and Mexico strongly opposes the barrier, especially when it floated onto their side of the Rio Grande. The program’s lack of support should be a huge indicator to Abbott that the buoys are a cruel and insensitive way to enforce border security.
While I agree that we need some measure of border security, Abbott has taken it too far. It is not okay to treat migrants in such an inhumane way, especially when we have migrants to thank for so much in the US. Migrants are essential to our economy, so if we continue to push them away by making many immigration options inaccessible, then our economy will suffer.
If the governor is going to try so hard to block off our borders, something needs to be done to make the legal immigration process easier and more accessible, that way migrants don’t have to resort to dangerous and illegal border crossings. One way to do this would be to improve the system for seeking asylum, seeing as the wait time can reach more than ten years, making it a long and difficult task. In many situations, that wait is too long for those fleeing economic or political turmoil. Therefore in order to lower wait times, more attention needs to be put towards the process of seeking asylum through means like hiring more immigration judges. Instead of putting resources towards limiting illegal border crossings, we should be using those resources to improve legal immigration.
If the government were to refine legal immigration policies, then less migrants would have to face illegal and dangerous border crossings made even more dangerous by Abbott’s Operation Lonestar. Improving the immigration program is a much better alternative to blocking out migrants with unsafe barriers at the border.
