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This is the Weeds. I'm John Gullin-Hell. Somehow a good chunk of my best friends
from college all ended up living in Texas. And I truly do have a great time
every time I visit them in Dallas. The food is great and the Texas State Fair is
a lot of fun. We'll soon be visiting the State Fair of Texas. And a lot of
them will be looking for the latest deep fried food. There's cornbread,
sausage bombs, deep fried sushi bombs, deep fried. I had no clue you could even
fry that many things. But still it's not enough to get me to move there.
Sorry guys. Because I have so many friends in Texas, my ears do perk up when I
hear any policy news out of the state. Like last year when Texas Governor Greg
Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent migrants to blue cities.
I'm breaking news this hour here in Los Angeles. A bus of migrants from Texas has
arrived at a church here in L.A. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is under fire
for using taxpayer dollars to organize flights of asylum seekers to Martha's
Vineyard. Texas Governor put more than four dozen asylum-seeking immigrants
who had crossed the Texas border on a bus and sent them 1700 miles north
to New York City. Governor Abbott has sent 500 buses of migrants to blue
cities. It's all part of Operation Lone Star.
That's the name he's given to his efforts to fight illegal immigration in
Texas. And now Abbott is back in the news for a
different tactic of Operation Lone Star. The state of Texas has placed
buoys and barbed wire along a border crossing site in Eagle Pass.
And the Department of Justice is suing in retaliation based on an 1899
law called the Rivers and Harbors Act. To find out why water law and not
immigration law is at the center of this legal battle, I called up a Texan.
My name is Gabriel Eckstein and I'm the director of the Energy Environmental
and Natural Resource Systems Law program at Texas A&M University where I'm also a
professor of law. I imagine when these buoys and razor wire were put in place at the end
of late July, your ears perked up. I mean, do you remember your reaction?
What were you talking about when this happened?
Well, I will admit that I've always been a bit skeptical on the approach
of the Texas government has taken toward immigration issues, border issues,
water issues on the border. And so I wasn't necessarily surprised
that Texas took this action, but it also was just a whole huge step beyond
what they've ever done before. Could you describe the barrier to me? Because I, you know,
when you look at pictures, you just sort of see these orange things floating in the water,
and they don't look as, I guess, for lack of a better word, ominous?
Threatening. Yeah, like they're scary up close.
If you see them on land, it's not that scary until you actually come close and see some of the
rotary chainsaw that's between each of these buoys. And that gets a little scary. But when they're
on land, they're about four or five feet tall, big, giant orange balls that are just
strung together, connected to each other. And it's just like a Lego set. You just hook them up
and add more to each other. When they're in the middle of a river, you have to think about the
perspective of you being in the river. Now, all of a sudden, you're not standing next to this
four foot high, five foot high, six foot high buoy. You're looking up at a four, five, six foot high
orange ball. Now, you would think, okay, well, maybe in between the two balls. Well, like I said,
they actually have this round metal piece with a jagged teeth on it, which looks like a rotary saw.
And it's right in between where the two buoys connect to each other so that you cannot actually
put your hand on there or try to climb in between. Now, below the water level, they're anchored
into the ground. So there's actually infrastructure underneath that you can't see into the riverbed.
And in between, but they actually have netting so that you cannot swim underneath them to get
to the other side. So it's a pretty elaborate system. And it's pretty long. Is it? I think
was reading. It's about the size of a football field, three football fields. Wow.
It's about a thousand feet long. And they put it in a particular section where
in the last year or two, for various reasons, what you've seen a higher number of migrants crossing.
It's a bit shallower in that area. It's just south of Eagle Pass. And it's a place where you've
seen more migrants coming more recently. So the barrier was installed in early July. And the
Justice Department files the lawsuit shortly thereafter. Can you tell us a little bit about what
the lawsuit contains? What is the government arguing? They only addressed one statute, one
federal statutes. It's called the Riversont Harbors Act from 1899. It's been around for quite a
long time. And what that statute does is prohibits placing anything in a navigable water body
without permission. Pretty simple. A couple of different provisions in there talking about
structures and weirs and anything that might be put inside the river or cause the river to change
its course or change the flow or change the conditions of the river. And there's another
provision that kind of builds on that, which is actually the first environmental provision
that the United States has ever had at the federal level. And it says you can't dump anything
into the river. Now, originally, this Riversont Harbors Act, the whole purpose was navigation.
So even the dumping of whether it's debris, wood, dirt, trash was to keep the navigable water body
navigable. And that's what they sued on. Could you explain to our audience kind of in basic terms
what the government exactly is arguing in this lawsuit? The statute itself is pretty simple. It says
you can't put anything into a navigable water body without permission. And it's either
permission of Congress, direct congressional permission that Congress can create a new act saying,
we're going to build a dam on the river. Well, that's permission. Or from the Army Corps of
Engineers, because Congress delegated the authority to manage these navigable waterways to the
Army Corps of Engineers. One other point, navigable water bodies. These are rivers and lakes on which
you can navigate. And under the Constitution, going back to a case from I think it's 1824,
because of what's called the Commerce Clause. Anything that relates to navigation is considered
part of the commercial transactions or relates to interstate commerce. And therefore is under
federal congressional authority, not the state. So that is what gave Congress the right to enact the
Riversont Harbors Act. And under the act, got to get permission. Texas did not inform Congress
or the Army Corps. They did not seek permission. And they went ahead intentionally and placed this
infrastructure, these bowies that are attached to the riverbed. They also put a concertina wire
on the banks, which is also essentially infrastructure. And both of these actions arguably are
in violation of the act. So Governor Abbott's Bowie Barrier was allegedly installed unlawfully.
Can you kind of walk us through that process of, you know, what if this had been all kind of done
on the up and up? If it had been installed legitimately, what would that look like?
So it really interesting that Dallas Morning News did this story that various offices in Texas
actually contacted the various federal offices and asked them about this. And they were told,
no, this would be illegal. So in fact, this is not something that was done on the
sly in the sense without, they actually asked about this and tried to get information. And they
did it in spite of the being told that this would be in violation. Now, had they done it in accordance
with the law, they would have gone to the Army Corps of Engineers and said, we want to build this
string of bowies. We're going to put them at this location. This far off land. We're going to
connect them to the riverbed using this material. We're going to have netting and so on. And
the Army Corps would then have done studies, research into what would a series of bowies a
thousand feet long in the middle of the river would it affect the rivers flow? Would it affect
the volume of the water, the direction the water is flowing, the speed at which it's flowing,
would it interfere with any kind of navigation? Whether it's kayaks or anything any other
bigger types of shipping that might occur in that water body. And then the Army Corps would issue
its decision. It could say no, absolutely not. Or yes, with these conditions. And if there's
yes with the conditions or yes with no conditions, it would issue a permit. That does not sound like
a very fast process, I will say. No, no, we're talking about the federal government. So it's
it's not usually a fast process. This is about immigration. But the DOJ is suing using this law
about navigation. Why why are we not talking about the elephant in the room? I actually thought
this was a smart move by the federal government. Because it avoids the elephant in the room.
Because the issue of immigration is a difficult issue. We don't have clear answers in terms of
how do we stop the immigration or how do we deal with migrants or how do we address the safety
issues of migrants? How do we address the concerns that citizens in the US have with regard to
these migrants? These are all sorts of issues that we do have to deal with. But the federal
government didn't want the court to deal with it. Because this is a I would argue this is a
political issue, not a legal issue. And we need to resolve it in the context of legislation
in context of politics and not have a judge decide wrong or right or who's violating what law.
Now, I will say that the Abbott administration is trying to make this an immigration issue,
is trying to make this a border security issue. And by not including those points in the lawsuit,
the DOJ is trying to circumvent and not have to deal with those points.
I think that's really interesting because like you said, Abbott very much wants to make this
about immigration. And despite the fact that the lawsuit doesn't really touch on that,
at all, he's been very adamant about the increased security at the border and that measures like
the bully border are protected under the Constitution. He's called the migrants an invasion
of illegal immigrants. Those are his words and saying that there's a need to take emergency
wartime effort. Does he have a case at all with that argument?
On the one side, you have the argument that border security and immigration are exclusively
in the domain of the federal government. And even if they don't necessarily fulfill their
obligations, the states are not allowed to step into that space because it is a federal obligation.
And if the federal government is not being responsible and fulfilling their obligation,
there are mechanisms and avenues that the states can take to try to encourage or even force
the government. They could sue the federal government to enforce the border security regulations
and immigration regulations and so on. That would be in my mind the proper approach.
Now, there is another argument that says that in the case that the federal government
is not fulfilling their obligations on border security and immigration, there's another clause
in the Constitution that provides something to the effect that the states, I don't remember
the exact wording of it, but that the states, if they are actually invaded, and this is why
Governor Abbott issued the word invasion, if they are actually invaded, then they are allowed
to protect their borders. Now, you have a problem of two provisions in the Constitution that
seem like they might be in conflict. And I'm not sure sure that there's a conflict there,
but that's what Governor Abbott is trying to make it out to be. That there's these two provisions,
a federal government supposed to take these obligations. They're not. And so we're going to rely
on this other provision here that says that we are allowed to take security precautions
and border protection if we're invaded. And that's why he's couching this migration,
this these immigrants as an invasion invading force.
What are the next steps in this lawsuit? Could we see this go all the way to the Supreme Court?
We could. It's a federal issue. The next step, if I remember correctly, there's a hearing on
August 22nd, in which the federal government has asked the court to force the governor, force
the state of Texas to stop any kind of additional construction and implementation of the buoy system,
and actually to remove it. If the court agrees with the DOJ, the governor and the Texas will have
10 days to remove them. So it'll be early September, the earliest that you would see them removed.
But that's only if the court agrees that they need to be removed pending the decision of the
and that's just that's not on the merits of the case. That's just sort of temporary action while
the case proceeds. After that, the case is going to proceed in a typical fashion where you have
discovery, pretrial motions, you have the actual trial, and then you have a decision by the court
that could take months, clearly I could take months. And then of course you have the appeals process.
Is there anything else that you think it's important for our listeners to know about this case?
You know, as the news comes out, as they're keeping an eye on it, as they're reading.
There's actually two other potential liability areas that have not been raised by any court yet.
One is domestic and one is international. The domestic one relates to endangered and threatened
species. It's not clear whether Texas should have spoken to the Fish and Wildlife Service to see
if there are threatened or endangered species in that area where they've installed the Bui system
and whether they have to get permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service if there are these
endangered threatened species. So that's another cause of action that it's unclear whether it
would apply or not, but nobody's fully raised it as of yet. The other one, which Mexico actually
has raised in its diplomatic notes, under a treaty that US has with Mexico, 1970 treaty,
the US and Mexico agreed to stabilize the flow of the river of the Rio Grande and to mitigate any kind
of flooding by preventing obstructions or deflectors. Anything that might deflect the flow
of the river, arguably putting this Bui system in the middle of the river is an obstruction and could
cause deflection of the flow. So if we had a flood situation, a big rain and lots of water,
how would that Bui system affect that excess water? We don't know because we didn't know we had to
know about this until the Bui's appeared a month ago and Mexico was never notified the International
Boundary of Water Commission, which sits at the border and is supposed to be managing these treaties
and these water flows. They were never informed that this is actually being done and so this could
be another violation, except that this is Texas causing the United States to be in violation of a
treaty it has with Mexico. Yeah, I mean, it's this big like, oh, the White House versus Texas,
like we're having this battle, but there are three players here. It's Mexico, Texas and the United
States. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely three players, Texas does have a certain degree of
claim to the waters of the Rio Grande because the waters flow along the border of Texas and they
have rights the water under Texas law. The problem is that the United States also has rights
to the Rio Grande that effectively under our form of government, this federal system we have,
it supersedes Texas's authority and then you have the US-Mexico relationship. There's a Texas
Mexico relationship, but not without the US-Mexico relationship. The Texas-Mexico relationship exists
only because the US authorizes Texas to have that relationship. It's really between the US and Mexico
and now the US is in violation of a treaty it has with Mexico because of the action the Texas has taken.
All right, Gabriel, next time. Thank you so much for joining me on the weeds.
My pleasure. Thank you.
Now that we understand the lawsuit from the DOJ, let's get into the issue that underpins everything
that's happening at the border. Immigration. That's coming up after a quick break.
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My name is Woody Eleg Arcia and I'm an immigration reporter with the Texas Tribune. I tend to cover
how immigration policy both at the federal and state level affect immigrants and people who live
along the border. I mean, speaking of the border, you've been to that buoy border in Eagle Pass.
Can you describe what it's like? What do you see when you're in Eagle Pass? It's kind of hard to
find. You have to be on a farmer's property. Her name is Magali Urbina. She owns the Pecan
farm with her husband and when you get to the end to the south end of her property,
what you see is a chain link fence riverbank and then a lot of wire on just on the edge of the
riverbank and then obviously you see the Rio Grande and in the middle of the Rio Grande, you'll see
the buoys. What is the town itself of Eagle Pass? Like, because you know, we've seen these buoys
in the news, but this is a place where people live. Right. It's a pretty small town. I want to say
30,000 residents. It's a bilingual town. It's very common. You hear Spanish and they also have
this park that's along the riverbank and before all this, before the wire, the National Garden,
troopers were there. A lot of people would go to that park to swim, kayak, fish along the river.
So the river was a recreational area and like I said, it's a small town. So a lot of people would
do outdoor things when it's not too hot and it's very common for people to go back and forth
between Eagle Pass and Pea that are snagged us like a lot of border towns. People have families
and jobs and schooling on both sides of the border. So the bridge is always busy.
I noticed when you were talking about the park, we used verbs that are in the past tense,
are people not utilizing that outdoor space anymore? You know, it was interesting when I went there
because there's some tension. There's just a lot of National Guard, a lot of troopers,
and a lot of wiring and the ram that people use to kayak and get their boats on there
is cut off. At least when I was there, there wasn't any access to the river from the park anymore.
So I don't know that anyone is using it without, at the very least, having to ask permission from
a National Guard or a trooper and I can't imagine. You can just go up to any of them on the ground and
say, hey, I want to go for a swim. I think there's a process to be able to do that.
So these measures at the border are part of Governor Abbott's Operation Lone Star. Can you
tell us about this initiative and the actions that have already taken place?
It has one basic mission and that's to prevent people from coming into Texas illegally.
The tactics that the state has used include sending National Guard along the Texas,
Mexico border along with troopers and other states such as Florida have sent their own National
Guard to help Texas. What they've been doing is they've been arresting some migrants who have
been crossing onto certain areas of the border and charging them with trespassing.
Like I said, it also has included other things such as migrants who have been processed and release
the state takes some of these migrants to what the state describes as sanctuary cities or
liberal cities like New York, Chicago, but the point being that border towns are overwhelmed.
So for those so-called sanctuary cities, Texas or Abbott wants to send a message to them saying,
this is what it feels like having so many immigrants all at once.
I guess the way I think of this, there are kind of three entities involved, and that's the state
of Texas, Mexico, and then the federal government. What actions have happened at the federal level?
Like what's their role in Operation Lone Star? Is border patrol working with Texas?
Is there a push and pull? What's going on? The federal government has no role
and Operation Lone Star, and that's what was interesting to see out in Eagle Pass. National Guard
and DPS troopers have overtaken private property and federal land, and so what they're doing is
immigrants are on the in Piedras Negras and they're sort of scouting to see where they can cross.
And once they cross or walk over through the river, obviously they're faced by a lot of
wires, so they have to walk along the edge of the river to an area where there's an opening,
and then that opening National Guard takes the man and turns them over to DPS troopers.
Originally, there were just the resting single men, a man who were coming without their families
and charging them with trespassing, and two recent policy changes are that they're also
resting single women now. The third one is that I don't know how common this is, but it was
most recently reported and confirmed by DPS that they've been separating some men from their families
and arresting them. Anyone who doesn't fit this sort of profile gets turned over to border patrol
by DPS. But going back to your question, the only role right now that we see the federal government
have been Operation Lone Star is that the Department of Justice recently sued Texas,
basically demanding to get rid of the buoys and all the wire along the river banks. So
it's a legal fight at this point between the state and the federal government.
Does it seem almost competition doesn't seem like the right words, but people between the federal
government and the state trying to get to migrants first? Right. Yes. What was interesting to
see is that DPS is sort of dictating they want to get to the migrants first. They want to be able to
say we've arrested so many and the state basically wants to be able to say if we're securing the border.
But that's simply not the case. The measure of securing the border is up for interpretation.
But if securing the border means no one crossing the river, then the mission is failing.
At the same time, the Biden administration has tried to create some legal pathways for people
who want to seek asylum to use those pathways to be able to basically enter the country in a more
orderly fashion. But at the same time, the Biden administration has implementing
stricter policies to be able to deter migrants from wanting to cross the river or cross the desert
depending on what part of the border you're in. So it wants to have it both ways and it doesn't
seem to be working because more and more people seem to be coming. And so it remains to be seen
what policy is going to change. But in reality, this phenomenon of mass migration, if you will,
is just bigger than the US. It's a worldwide issue. So whatever policies either the state or the
country wants to implement, don't seem to be working right now and they need to be thinking bigger
than just how do we deter people from wanting to come? Can you clarify what happens when border
patrol agents work with migrants versus the state of Texas? What do those two different paths look
like? It's kind of a choose their own adventure. But let's put it in the most common way.
And that is if someone crosses the river or someone crosses the border illegally,
they'll get arrested by border patrol depending on the demographics if they're coming with
family, if they're coming with children, they won't necessarily be prosecuted for answering the
country illegally. In some cases, they do, but let's say they don't. They get arrested, they get
processed, they get background checked, they're held in custody and to border patrol decides,
okay, well, we can process them right now for deportation. So we're going to let them go with
the intention that they're going to show up in court or show up to an immigration office to kick
start the immigration legal process. And that could mean this immigrant may ask for asylum,
which it's an average of five-year process, or they could be ordered deported. And in that case,
immigration and customs enforcement gets involved. They'll arrest them, they'll get charged with
entering the country illegally, and they could face criminal proceedings and potentially prison time.
And if not, they'll just try to get them to agree to get deported back to their home countries.
But keep in mind that most recently, we're talking about Venezuelans coming in. And right now,
there's no diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, which makes it hard to deport
Venezuelans back to their home country because the U.S. doesn't have access to Venezuelan land
right now. And so what ends up happening is that, okay, well, we just have to keep, you know,
I hate to say like this, like, if they're property, they're not, but, you know, from the perspective
of immigration, they just have to keep the Venezuelans in the country and let them seek some sort
of alternative to stay in the U.S. After one more quick break, we'll discuss where immigration
policy stands now, and how the expiration of Title 42, which was in place since the early days
of the pandemic, has affected the number of migrants attempting to cross the border.
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So, Texas has launched Operation Loan Star and the state is claiming that there's been an invasion
of migrants at the border, but those numbers of asylum seekers appear to be trending downward.
What is the truth here? Can you break those numbers down for us?
I'll say right off the bat, there's no invasion. An invasion is described as some sort of
government using violence to be able to overthrow another government. That's not happening.
There's no government, either Mexico or Venezuela trying to do that. As far as the numbers,
keep in mind that there was a record-breaking number of apprehensions of migrants at the southern
border under the Biden administration. To introduce another element to the issue is that after
Title 42, those numbers started going down and they've been the lowest, at least for the first few
months after Title 42, under the Biden administration. The numbers in July started to go up again.
Yeah, and in May, we saw the end of Title 42. Can you explain how that worked when people showed
up at the border? So what Title 42 was or is a public emergency health order and under the Trump
administration and what it did was that any person showing up to the border either through the bridge
or crossing the border illegally and then they get turned over to or turn themselves over to
immigration officials and if they were seeking asylum or any sort of immigration benefit at the
border, border patrol agents or any other immigration agents had to turn away that migrant regardless
of what they were asking for and so they were just being returned to Mexican border towns and there
was no legal ramification with that. If you would just turn yourself in, border patrol would say,
no, we're taking you back and that was the end of that and that person, if they're desperate enough
and if they're in perilous situations, they would try again repeatedly until they were able to come
in. But that's essentially how it worked as migrants would come to the border, immigration agents
would say, I can't do anything for you. I'm dropping you off in Mexico and it was just a cycle.
Once that was sunsetted, what's happened since then? How does the asylum process work now?
So ever since then, the country has gone back to using the decades-long immigration laws that
were on the book. Basically, what happens now is you cross the border illegally, you get arrested,
you could get prosecuted for answering the country illegally. If it's more than your first time,
it's a felony at that point and you can face prison time and eventually deport it and some other
cases. Once you're in those proceedings, you can ask for asylum and during that process,
you know, like I said, it kicks off an average of five-year-long process. You have to be able to prove
that you didn't have protections from your government or you were being persecuted for certain
things such as your religion, your political views, or some other social points of use that you
had in your home country. If you failed, you basically get deported. So in a lot of cases,
basically, what ends up happening is you get deported or you get asylum or you face prison time.
And getting deported, that's a legal term and basically that's something that immigration agents
will look down the road if you apply for residency, citizenship, or even asylum down the road.
So the stakes are higher, good pace. Prison time, get deported, and the consequences are much
harsher now. So it seems like the narrative about federal immigration policy is kind of getting
lost here and also the need for reform is getting lost in this mess too. Are there any aspects of
federal policy that are working in Texas right now? Well, there are some federal policies that
seem to be working, not just in Texas, but just in general. And one of those is the Biden
administration has created sort of or not created. In some cases, created and in some cases,
expanded reunification family programs. And this only applies to certain nationalities
that if you're already in the US and you have a legal right to be in the US, whatever that may be
if you're in the asylum process or have a green card, you have a right to petition for your family back
home to be able to come to the US. And what that creates is basically they'll do the immigration
process for the person in their home country. And once they qualify, they're able to fly
into the US, which cuts off any sort of treacherous track for some of these migrants. So that's a
policy that advocates and experts have said, you know, these are the kinds of things that the Biden
administration needs to expand on. It cuts off the smuggler. It cuts off any sort of dangerous
route that the migrant has to take. It puts less pressure on immigration agents along the actual
border. So that's a policy that seems to be working. I think one of the things that's interesting to
me is it's no secret that immigration policy is a weak point for the Biden administration. And
that's the case wherever you sit on it, like immigration advocates have their critiques.
People who are hawkish on immigration have their critiques. And you know, at the end of the day,
Governor Abbott is a politician. And I'm wondering how you're thinking of how the politics are
shaping this. Like, you know, last year when we saw the buses from Texas and Florida, it was
it was very obviously a hit at the White House on top of policy. And I'm just wondering how you see
politics shaping this both nationally, but also state politics. I'll be frank, I'm not
I'm not a political reporter. And the way I see these sort of things comes from sort of a more
grounded point of view. I'm not going to be able to tell you who has the advantage here. I can
tell you who's losing out here. And that's both us Americans and the migrants themselves.
You know, we have a labor shortage. There's thousands of migrants looking for work.
One aspect that I'd mention is that even if they do have a legal right to be in the US after
crossing the border is that they don't immediately get a work permit that takes months,
if not years, to get the work permit. And so a lot of them are just waiting to get their work
permit to work. You know, this is takes a lot of mental and emotional anguish on them.
The country needs labor and there's migrants wanting to work, but we're not letting them.
As far as the politics, it just seems like two different worlds. We have the reality
of what's going on on the ground. And we have the political world in which
Abbot and Biden are fighting over this. And to what end, it doesn't seem clear right now because
Abbot has an announced that he's running for a higher office. And the Biden administration has
implemented stricter penalties in some cases or stricter policies, I should say.
And it just seems to be a lot of infighting. Meanwhile, people who depend on the migrants and
the migrants wanting to come in seem to be losing out on all of this.
If you could offer the Texas government any advice when it comes to this, what would you say?
I mean, because you're on the ground, you're doing this reporting. You're seeing so much first hand.
Yeah, I mean, some of the things that I saw on the Rio Grande or even from
Yaduras Negras, I saw men and women in crutches walking along the river. I met a man who
I believe, if I recall correctly, 34-year-old man from Venezuela was walking in crutches.
He had a scar around his head, a scar around his waist. About a year ago, he was hit by a
motorcycleist as he was walking down the street. He needed 84 screws on his face to hold his face
together. And he's at four surgeries. Oh my gosh. And Venezuela, we can do a whole episode on
the disarray that's going on in Venezuela. But to the point here is that there's no good healthcare
right now in Venezuela. And he needs medical attention. He's coming to the US for that medical
attention. And to see him walk along the river while National Guard is just looking and not
doing anything to help, it was just jarring to see. I think objectively speaking,
anyone who would see this, see a man struggle to walk along the river would offer some sort of
help or ask him, are you okay at the very least? And I did not see that. And it was a hard
reality to see because I think in the US, we sort of idolized service members and any sort of
law enforcement capacity. And we see them as heroes in some cases. And in this case,
that was not the reality. National Guard was just staring at this man's struggle,
making him walk a few miles down the river until he got to an opening rather than just cut the
wire and let him in. The only advice I would just say is that, you know, if you have any sort of
humanity and you see this, the politics go away. They wash away. You want to be able to help. And
that's something that Magalior Rina, the woman that I mentioned earlier, who wants the P-Can of
Farm. She's a Republican and she voted for Abbott. And, you know, when she saw the reality of
what these policies are doing to migrants, I recall she told me that she's not a Democrat or a Republican.
She's a humanitarian now. And what she's doing now is helping people.
Uriel Garcia, thank you so much for joining us on the weeds.
Thank you guys for inviting me.
That's all for us today. Thank you to Gabriel X-Dine and Uriel Garcia for joining me.
This episode was produced by Kaelin Bogouki, additional production help from Sophie LaLon,
Krishanayala engineered this episode, Serena Solin, and Kim Agelson fact-checked it,
our editorial director is A.M. Hall, and I'm your host, John Colin Hill.
The weeds is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.