Abbott's "Aquatic Border Wall" Draws Protest From Mexico...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

EAGLE PASS, Texas | Mexico has lodged a complaint against Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's plan to place buoys up and down the Rio Grande in an effort, he has said, to stop what is now a trickle of undocumented immigrants. The governor's buoys - see photos above and below - arrived at the riverbanks this week.

This from the ultra-conservative Washington Examiner: [ Mexico sent Texas a complaint letter regarding the buoys in the Rio Grande and will soon deploy a team to investigate. According to Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena, the buoys risk violating the water treaty of 1944, which largely surrounds the use of water from the Rio Grande, but could be affected if the new barriers, meant to prevent border crossings via the water, affect the river's flow. Barcena sent the complaint on June 26, before the buoys were deployed.

"We are sending a mission, a territorial inspection to see where the buoys are located ... to carry out this topographical survey to verify that they do not cross into Mexican territory," Barcena told reporters Friday.

Barcena also lamented the addition of more razor wire installed along a low-lying island near Eagle Pass, Texas, which Gov. Greg Abbott (R) referred to as a tactic "to prevent people from even crossing the middle part of the Rio Grande River and coming into the state of Texas" during a television interview Friday.

Abbott is already facing a lawsuit from a local kayaking business owner alleging that the buoys prevent him from conducting tours. The Texas governor responded by threatening that he would take the suit all the way to the Republican-controlled Supreme Court.

These buoys, at about 1,000 feet long, cost the state about $1 million. This comes from the $5.1 billion granted by the Texas legislature toward securing the border. ]

Theoretically, the U.S. side of the Rio Grande ends in the middle of the river, everything from the middle south belongs to Mexico. That the buoys could come apart and drift into Mexican waters is a very real, almost predictable possibility.

Plus, the very idea of such an "Aquatic Border Wall" is dumb.

What else is Greg Abbott thinking? What else is up his sleeve? It says here that perhaps he should have talked this over with high-ranking Mexican officials. Many of them are sympathetic and might have even helped him.

But his words and actions show he has not cared about Mexico, or anything Mexican, so...

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