Texas troopers employed by Greg Abbott’s border patrol initiative were instructed to push children into the Rio Grande and deny migrants water in extreme heat, according to emails sent by a state employee.
A trooper-medic from the state’s department of public safety expressed concern over “inhumane” actions towards migrants in a 3 July email to supervisors and reveals other unreported incidents involving migrants, the Houston Chronicle first reported.
The email, which the Guardian independently reviewed, gives a report of weekly events from 24 June to 1 July, detailing several cases of migrants being caught or injured by barbed wire in Eagles Pass, a Texas city along the US border with Mexico.
In the email, the trooper calls for several policy changes to prevent further injury to migrants, including removing barrels wrapped in razor wire in the river.
“The wire and barrels in the river needs to be taken out as this is nothing but a in humane trap in high water and low visibility,” the trooper wrote.
The trooper also told officials to reverse orders to withhold water from migrants.
“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, the Chronicle reported.
The trooper added: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
In one instance on 30 June, the trooper treated a four-year-old girl who passed out from heat exhaustion after she attempted to pass through the wire amid 100F (nearly 38C) conditions. Texas national guard soldiers pushed her and her group back towards Mexico.
The same day, a pregnant woman was treated after troopers found her caught in the wire and in extreme pain. The woman was having a miscarriage, and emergency responders took her to a hospital.
One teenager also broke his leg trying to avoid the wire and had to be carried by his father.
In a separate case on 25 June, troopers discovered a group of 120 people along a fence on the river, the trooper wrote. The group, including small children and infants who were nursing, were exhausted and hungry. But a commanding officer ordered troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico”, the trooper wrote in an email.
Troopers ultimately refused their supervisors’ orders given “the very real potential of exhausted people drowning”. They expressed their concerns to the commanding officer but were told to “tell [the migrants] to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. The trooper wrote that other border patrol employees provided care to migrants after they left.
“I believe we a have stepped over a line into the in humane. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God,” the trooper wrote in the email. “We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”
The trooper’s email added that wire running along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags”.
The trooper’s email also reveals additional drownings in the Rio Grande that were not reported. On 1 July, a mother and one of her two children drowned while crossing the river as federal border patrol agents saw the family struggling. The mother and one child were taken from the water, and they were pronounced dead after being brought to a hospital by emergency responders. The second child was never found, the trooper emailed.
A Texas department of safety spokesperson, Travis Considine, told the Guardian that the state’s inspector general was investigating the emailed allegations.
Considine added that there was no directive or policy that “that instructs troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river”. He added a tweet with screenshots showing public safety department officials instructing employees to be alert for migrants in need of rescue or medical attention.
A representative from the governor’s office could also not be reached for immediate comment.
Abbott has been widely criticized for his treatment of migrants and methods employed by his Operation Lone Star plan to prevent migration at the US-Mexico border.
The state has approved $5.1bn for the plan.
Abbott announced last month that a barrier of buoys would be installed in the Rio Grande to prevent migrants from swimming across into the US.
Rodolfo Rosales, Texas state director of the League of United Latin Americans Citizens, spoke out against Abbott’s plan.
“We view it as a chilling reminder of the extreme measures used throughout history by elected leaders against those they do not regard as human beings, seeking only to exterminate them, regardless of the means employed,” Rosales told CBS News.
