Human rights groups allege abuse against immigrants by Texas border force

Immigrants trying to cross the United States-Mexico border in Texas are being shoved into razor wire and fired at with pepper balls by those working under Governor Greg Abbott‘s Operation Lone Star, human rights groups claim.

The $11.2 billion program, enacted in 2021, was the brainchild of Abbott, who has said he was left with no choice because of inaction by President Biden to deal with border security.

Operation Lone Star (OLS) has been challenged in the courts, including a back-and-forth over a floating blockade Texas officials placed in the Rio Grande. Abbott has insisted that the barrier is a necessary deterrent, pointing to the state’s 516,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions since 2021.

Now groups like the Border Network for Human Rights and Border Servant Corps say they are going to document alleged abuses by the Texas National Guard, which has been charged with carrying out much of OLS’ work.

“In July of 2023, a Texas National Guard medic actually wrote an email to his supervisors, which was then made public, which described a number of disturbing orders he had received, including when they encountered a four-year-old girl who was trying to cross the concertina wire in 100 degree heat,” Daniel Woodward, a legal fellow on the Beyond Borders team at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told Newsweek.

“They were ordered to push that group, including this four-year-old girl, back across the river and not give them any help.”

Woodward and others are hoping to build a case over the next few months to present to the Texas state legislature when it returns in January. The groups are also hoping to get the federal government’s attention, calling on Congress to take back its responsibilities for border security.

“We have heard reports of a guard beating people in El Paso as they as they crossed the concertina wire, taunting them with racist abuse,” Woodward continued. “And just trying to make life so miserable for them that they cross back into Mexico.”

A report from the Texas American Civil Liberties Union in May highlighted alleged issues with OLS, including racial profiling and high numbers of prosecutions of American citizens instead of immigrants.

“Unchecked cruelty is not a policy solution,” the group said at the time, accusing Abbott of using language that stemmed from “white supremacy”.

Under OLS, detention facilities have been expanded to hold those arrested, often for misdemeanors such as trespassing on private land along the border.

“We’ve heard reports of people being served undercooked food, food with cockroaches and worms in it,” Woodward told Newsweek of the OLS facilities. “We’ve heard reports of people being forced to stand for up to 8 hours in the hot sun, and we’ve also heard reports of people being abused and called racist insults by guards.”

Abbott has repeatedly claimed that OLS is making Texas safer, saying recently that border crossings in the state were down 85% and that around 40,000 felony charges had been brought since the group was announced.

The organizations scrutinizing the operation said that border communities do not feel safer, with an uptick in high-speed chases and arrests further from the border.

“So officers are charged with stopping people they suspect as being migrants, but in practice that often looks like just stopping brown and black people,” Woodward said.

“There was an incident of a family in El Paso that was stopped and rammed off the road and held at gunpoint, simply, it seems, because of the way they looked. We hear complaints and fears about that in border communities across south Texas.”

Newsweek reached out to the governor’s office, Texas Department for Public Safety and Texas National Guard for comment via email.

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