OAN’s Abril Elfi
12:28 PM – Thursday, August 3, 2023
Two bodies were found near the United States-Mexico border in Rio Grande. One of the bodies was floating along the separation barrier between the countries.
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On Wednesday, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department reported that they had recovered a body that was floating along the river barrier installed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) along the southern border. Later that day, the Coahuila state prosecutor’s office stated they recovered another body three miles upriver from the bayous.
In two separate notes that announced the finding of the bodies, Mexican officials reportedly claimed the barrier’s installment was unsafe, saying it was a “violation of [their] sovereignty.”
“We made clear our concern about the impact on migrants’ safety and human rights that these state policies would have,” the department said in a statement.
Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, argued that preliminary information indicates that the first person found dead had “drowned upstream from the marine barrier and floated into the buoys.”
He had also previously stated how the barrier was a “protective way” to keep the migrants from drowning.
As directed by Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety installed the bayou barriers this summer in an effort to make it more difficult for migrants to unlawfully enter the U.S. Nonetheless, the Department of Justice has sued the governor over the use of the barrier.
The number of undocumented crossings of the southern border fell to their lowest point since the Biden Administration’s inception in June.
Officials in the Biden Administration have credited their unprecedented efforts to decline illegal border crossings by providing possibilities for immigrants to enter the U.S. with government approval as well as their harsher asylum requirements for individuals who do not apply for these programs.
“Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining our effective border enforcement plan and making it hard for CBP to do their jobs of securing the border,” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in a statement. “The governor’s actions are cruel and put both migrants and border agents in danger.”
The process of identification of the bodies and causes of death are underway.
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