Democrats hate the Rio Grande border barrier in Texas because it WORKS

AUSTIN, Texas – If there’s anything I’ve studied and reported on illegal immigration for 15 years, it’s this:

Illegal immigration advocates who don’t like a particular new border control measure will claim it never works. But if the activists really know – deep down – that the idea will actually work to Well, they will use political, propaganda, and judicial campaigns to kill it.

Case in point: Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s new floating sea barrier.

Last month, Texas spent $1 million to lay the first thousand feet of bright orange floating buoys, nets attached to the river bottom, on a high-traffic stretch of the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass and plans to use them when needed to extend for kilometers.

It will never worksupporters of illegal immigration like Mexico’s President immediately screamed. Like Trump’s border wall, it’s folly, they claimed.

Of course they know that’s not true: the wall and the water barrier are extremely effective, and therefore they must stop it.

The first weapon they use is a propaganda campaign. They claim the barrier is genocidal, inhuman and cruel.

“We’ll take a look [the marine barrier] as a chilling reminder of the extreme measures that elected leaders throughout history have taken against those they do not consider human, with the goal of eradicating them, whatever the means employed,” said Rodolfo Rosales of the League of United Latin American citizen said CBS News in a typical topic of conversation.

With that table set, it was no surprise that mass migration advocates, their liberal supporters in the US media, and the Mexican President and State Department responded to a recent occasion when a body was found on the cordon and another nearby became. Before any inconvenient fact-finding could kick in, mass advocacy of illegal immigration propagated the narrative that the Texas Water Wall had killed someone.

“Abbott’s border policy has cost another life,” said Joaquin Garcia of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE). publicly declared without evidence.

Of course that wasn’t true. The Honduran on the barrier drowned far upstream and swam to the barrier, said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the Houston Chronicle. The second body was found three miles upriver.

“The Mexican government is completely wrong,” said Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris a prepared statement dated August 5. Doesn’t matter; The original narrative survives across the internet and is repeated without shame.

Next, foreseeable legal disputes started. These included a lawsuit by the Biden administration and proposed US fish and wildlife regulations claim the barrier threatens endangered river musselsAnd violates international requirements for government approval.

A private lawsuit brought by a kayak company claims the barrier ruins the recreational experience.

It’s all desperation. Because barrier opponents know that this restricts illegal immigration.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection closely tested the water wall Abbott installed and found it defeated nearly all comers, former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan told me.

“The research and development was extensive” during the Trump era, Morgan said. Then President Biden took office and shut down the project.

Have tests shown it stops immigrants, I asked?

“Of course it was,” Morgan said. “We were ready to go. That’s why the Texas governor was able to implement it so quickly.”

Documents released long before the Texas barrier was erected show that versions of such structures, albeit primarily in salt water, have worked well for decades to deter and deter divers or small craft in sabotage and terrorist operations.

For example, after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole with a raft loaded with explosives in 2000 in a port in Yemen The US Navy began using them against “water-related encroachments” in ports around the world. The island city-state of Singapore built water walls a decade ago to stop illegal immigration too slow at hotspots along the coast an ongoing mass migration crisis by sea.

Today, water barriers are part of a system that 70% of the coast of this island nation cordoned off. Illegal immigration by 2020 had fallen to pre-crisis levels in Singapore.

The barrier works. That’s why they hate it. A senior Texas police officer told me:

“No one comes close. Nobody ignores it. Nobody goes under it,” he said. “I’d like two more miles from that.”

Todd Bensman is the author of Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in US History.