‘Barbaric’: White House and Texas Democrats blast Abbott’s use of razor wire at border

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday condemned Texas’ use of razor wire to deter border crossings after a state trooper raised an alarm that migrants had been sliced and entangled, refused water and pushed back into the river despite exhaustion, heat and injury.

“It is abhorrent. It is despicable. It is dangerous,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that if the accounts are accurate, the state’s actions violate “bedrock values.”

Texas Democrats in Congress called Gov. Greg Abbott’s tactics “barbaric.” Several said international human rights laws have been violated.

“Greg Abbott placed death traps in the Rio Grande and has now issued barbaric orders to state troopers that endanger people’s lives,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, leading a press call with other Texas Democrats in Congress to castigate the governor.

The two leading contenders hoping to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz were among those issuing scathing denunciations: Dallas Congressman Colin Allred and state Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio.

“I refuse to believe that this is who we are as Texans or as Americans ... If this account is true. this is inhumane and completely unacceptable,” Allred told Texas reporters.

“This is criminal. This is wrong. This is inhumane. We’re brutalizing people,” Gutierrez said in an interview. “What’s happening now on the border is a tremendous, tremendous failure of the Abbott administration.”

In his July 3 email, the trooper told superiors that officers had been told not to provide water to migrants trying to enter the country illegally, and were even ordered to push children and mothers with nursing infants back into the river — orders he described as inhumane.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has denied that such policies exist.

An aide to Cruz, a two-term Republican, did not respond to a request for his views on the letter. The senator was active on social media Tuesday, denouncing a likely impending indictment of former President Donald Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, but steering clear of the latest border controversy.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also didn’t directly address the latest reports. An aide pointed to comments last week, when complaints surfaced from Border Patrol agents who said the state’s razor wire impeded their ability to reach migrants in distress.

“The only reason that that wire is being used by the Texas law enforcement and National Guard is because the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities to deal with border security. And so Governor Abbott and Texas law enforcement are doing the best they can. Obviously, that’s not ideal,” Cornyn said last week.

Democrats weren’t holding back their fury.

Castro asserted that Texas installed subsurface nets around razor-wrapped buoys, with the explicit intent of drowning migrants. He called on the State Department to step in.

“President Biden also needs to speak up, and his administration needs to do everything possible to stop Greg Abbott from these horrific actions,” he said.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Houston said Texas’ “barbaric” treatment of migrants — a term invoked by many Democrats — probably amounts to criminal violations of U.S. and international law.

“Greg Abbott needs to ask himself what would Jesus do? I think Jesus would be embarrassed and find this very shameful,” she said.

Abbott has directed billions in state funds to Operation Lone Star, using National Guard and state police to tighten border security he says the federal government has failed to provide.

In the Legislature, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus demanded that Abbott abandon his draconian border policies, vowing to “use every legislative tool to investigate these injustices.”

“From a pregnant mother having a miscarriage while trapped in barbed wire to drownings of children and outright refusals to provide life-saving water in extreme Texas heat, the treatment of our fellow humans on the Texas-Mexico border by DPS is unconscionable and unacceptable,” said state Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, chair of the caucus.

The governor’s conservative allies in the Legislature defended the border tactics.

“If in fact [Abbott] is taking a bolder approach to border security by directing DPS troopers to repel illegal crossers, he has my full support,” tweeted state Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, chair of the Texas Freedom Caucus. “Every Republican legislator should be speaking up as Dems and the media try to shame Abbott into backing down.”

Many Democrats called out Abbott and like-minded Republicans as hypocrites, saying their indifference toward migrants is inconsistent with their abhorrence of abortion.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, called the lack of Republican outcry a sign that their party is “lawless.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said that as president, Donald Trump “used cruelty as public policy [and] even his Department of Homeland Security rejected the use of buoys, because they knew how deadly that policy and practice would be.”

“Pushing kids back into the water, putting razor wire around buoys to create drowning devices” is both illegal and wrong, said Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin. “Greg Abbott wants his name in the headlines, even if it means a child’s name gets put in the obituaries.”