Two Bodies Found in Rio Grande

Facts

• Texas and Mexico officials found two bodies in the Rio Grande on Wednesday, one of them caught in the southern part of the floating border barrier deployed last month by Texas authorities at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott.¹
• Preliminary information from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety suggests that the lifeless person lodged against the barrier drowned upstream and floated into the buoys. The other corpse was recovered 3 miles upriver, away from the floating border.²
• As of Thursday, both people remain unidentified and their cause of death is unknown. Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena told the Dallas Morning News that it was unclear whether they were connected.³
• The reported discovery prompted Mexico, which has already sent two diplomatic letters to the US, to again criticize the 1,000-ft barrier, expressing concerns about its impact on migrants' safety and human rights.⁴
• This comes about a week after the US Dept. of Justice sued Texas for installing the barrier, also filing a motion for a preliminary injunction to force the state to remove the barriers within 10 days at its own expense.⁵
• The lawsuit claims that Abbott has violated the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899 and failed to obtain a permit through the US Army Corps of Engineers before deploying the buoys, but Abbott argues that this federal law doesn't apply to Texas' actions.⁶

Sources: ¹USA Today, ²Washington Post, ³Forbes, ⁴Daily Mail, ⁵FOX News, and ⁶NBC.

Narratives

• Democratic narrative, as provided by Common Dreams. This kind of tragedy has been waiting to happen ever since Republican Texas Gov. Abbott launched his cruel border policies based on setting death traps to try to stop asylum seekers from entering the US. The buoy barrier isn't only an ineffective measure but also a grave violation of human rights, so the federal government must take action against it.
• Republican narrative, as provided by Washington Examiner. The Mexican government is outrageously attempting to pin the blame on Texas for a tragedy that's independent of the state's floating border. In reality, drownings in the Rio Grande by people seeking to enter the US illegally are sadly all too common due to Biden and López Obrador recklessly pushing for open-border policies instead of securing the border.

Predictions