The Tortilla Curtain

Nothing ever works to stop illegal immigration across the Texas and Mexico frontier. Migrants keep coming north hoping for a better life in the U.S., and they often find ways to enter the country without documentation at remote crossing points. The only effective solution appears to be the construction of a Berlin Wall, (a physical representation of the Iron Curtain separating the Soviet bloc of countries from the West), with gunmen manning parapets and shooting anyone who attempts to enter the country illegally. The governor of Texas, though, is building a Tortilla Curtain, which is a razor wire barricade also patrolled by soldiers and lawmen, costing billions of tax dollars. It is, however, having no appreciable affect on immigration numbers regardless of his false rhetorical claims to the contrary. He is also lying about what he is doing while harming border communities.

Governor Greg Abbott’s latest effort to destroy the environment, economics, and aesthetics of the U.S. - Mexico border involves giant barbed wire barriers through the city of El Paso. The country is America’s largest trading partner and has taken more than a modest amount of offense at Abbott’s radical politics, which have included armed patrols and razor wire buoys in the Rio Grande that affect a navigable international waterway protected by treaty with Mexico, and kill people crossing the river. Washington has filed lawsuits against Texas for placing the buoys without Army Corps of Engineers’ approval and the Supreme Court authorized the Border Patrol to cut razor wire when needed to perform its duties. Final rulings are pending in federal appeals courts but could have a significant impact on the constitutional authority of Washington to protect the border and not rogue, ambitious politicians.

In El Paso, though, Abbott is costing local taxpayers millions with his nonsensical Operation Lone Star (OLS), the ongoing militarization of the border. As immigrants step onto U.S. soil, they tend to surrender to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents for processing, and thousands are taken to jails run by city and county governments to await adjudication. They are arrested by Department of Public Safety Troopers surged to the border under a new state law that authorizes Texas to make arrests of immigrants without documentation. When they fill up the local and regional jails, however, jurisdictions like the city of El Paso lose millions in federal tax money because they are no longer receiving payment from Washington for housing detainees for the U.S Marshals Service. Texas has, unsurprisingly, refused to offer compensation even as it’s budget for OLS has surpassed $13 billion dollars.

In what has become a typical Abbott tactic, he has created new problems instead of solving the old issues. When El Paso County houses border violator detainees, the federal government reimburses costs at $101 daily per person held. Texas filling up that bed space with its own arrested immigrants means the county is not receiving a penny. The cost is $87 dollars per day to feed and house one individual, which is being paid for by local taxpayers because there is no room for Border Patrol detainees after Texas-arrested individuals are processed. The change has cost El Paso County, according to commissioners, about $10 million since Texas began taking into custody immigrants in what several constitutional lawsuits have claimed is a violation of the federal government’s right and responsibility to protect the border.

Besides beds and housing, costs to El Paso County include medical, and judicial and detainee processing. An average of 300 Operation Lone Star detainees are being held daily in the county facilities and the number frequently reaches 400. At a minimum, the cost is $30,000 daily to county taxpayers. If the situation is not corrected, the total loss of revenue to El Paso in 2024 will reach about $18 million dollars. Commissioners sent a letter to the governor’s office months ago offering a solution that would see immigrants sent to state jails but there has been no response, likely because those are already full of people awaiting processing without legal representation. The city continues to endure additional financial irresponsibility by the Republican Party after former President Trump has refused to pay a bill of $569,204 for a rally held there in February of 2019. More than five years later, his campaign is still ignoring repeated demands for payment from the city.

Abbott’s building of a barrier through El Paso will have no impact beyond defacing the aesthetics of one of the world’s busiest land ports and forcing immigrants into remote regions at great risk to their lives. In 1993, the head of the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol, Silvestre Reyes, instituted a program called “Hold the Line,” which deployed additional human resources along the Rio Grande running through the city. Urban crossings were dramatically reduced but immigrants kept moving into the country across the far reaches of the southwestern deserts, and many died. Abbott’s results are no different, and, in fact, probably by design. A few dead immigrants sends a message back southward that there is too much at risk to try to reach America. By spreading his tortilla curtain along the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, Texas, he has also sent people to try crossings in New Mexico and Arizona, considerably more dangerous in 100 degree plus heat.

Abbott’s xenophobic rationale for his border charade is connected to a couple of foundational lies by his party and Trump’s sycophants. The first is a belief that vast amounts of fentanyl are being carried into the U.S. by immigrant “mules” in their tattered backpacks. The claim is demonstrable nonsense. Imagine a cartel lining up desperate immigrants and giving them drugs to ferry across the border. The organization has at risk millions of dollars on the backs of people they will not be able to track or take payment from after delivery. An overwhelming majority of the contraband enters this country through legal ports in vehicles or cargo connected to drug traffickers. Interception is difficult because it tends to be hidden among legitimate products and even smuggled via mail services from overseas, exploiting gaps in security and inspection processes at border checkpoints and postal facilities.

The other paranoias Abbott and Trump repeatedly lie about are dark fantasies of illegal immigrants voting and replacing the White population. MAGAt political candidates and pundits are frequently heard talking about Democrats opening the borders to allow in more illegals to vote against Republicans. This is patent Rhinoceros shit. No one votes in U.S. elections without a voter registration and that cannot be acquired from a county registrar without appropriate proofs of residency and citizenship, and, no, a driver’s license delivered to poll workers will not be sufficient to get you a ballot. They are checked against registration databases. The “Replacement Theory,” is almost too stupid to mention since it involves “elites” allowing overwhelming numbers of non-whites into the country to change demographics and culture to serve progressive Democratic policies; quite a feat for a party that is consistently called incompetent and disarray by Republicans.

According to the Texas governor, his tactics and investments have reduced border crossings by 85 percent, a number he thinks is directly connected to his deadly endeavors. The drop in apprehensions of illegal immigrants, however, is almost certainly tied to reduced northward migration, a consequence of policy changes instituted by the Biden Administration. He issued an executive order to reduce asylum prospects for anyone crossing over illegally, which restricts their claims. Exceptions are included for unaccompanied children and trafficking victims. The White House has also ordered focused enforcement on recent arrivals instead of long-term residents, which sends a deterrent message to potential new illegal entrants. The president also ordered increased expulsions under Title 42 that limits asylum applications and requires immigrants to remain in Mexico while their cases are being evaluated.

What the MAGA movement and Gov. Abbott refuse to recognize is this country’s responsibilities for the surge of strangers at our gate. Our adventurism in Central America began in earnest in 1954 when the CIA orchestrated a coup to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz. He had made the mistake of instituting agrarian reform policies by redistributing to peasants large estates and land owned by the U.S. corporation United Fruit. Honduras, too, was dominated by American banana companies that exercised broad power over the economy and politics, which lead to creation of the term “banana republic.” U.S. troops were frequently deployed to the countries of the Northern Triangle to protect U.S. businesses during periods of political instability caused by oppressive wages and mistreatment of peasant workers. Our involvement in the Contra War in Nicaragua and the Civil War in El Salvador included American aid for interests that consistently violated human rights. The results of these interventions have been long-term political and economic instability that created an environment for drug cartels to exercise violence and outsized influence.

Those are the issues President Biden charged Vice President Kamala Harris with addressing. He did not put her in charge of border security; her task was to begin finding methods to reduce the social and economic crises plaguing Central America and causing migration. No matter how many times Greg Abbott and Trump lie about her being a failed “border czar,” Harris’ responsibility was to mitigate the root causes of migration, which, unsurprisingly, she accomplished. Initiatives established by the Biden Administration and instituted by Harris have included numerous investments in jobs for the region by American corporations.

1. Gap committed to increasing its material sourcing from Central America, aiming for $150 million and is expected to create 5,000 additional jobs in the region​.
2. Visa plans to invest $270 million over the next five years to integrate more people and small- to medium-sized businesses into the global financial system​
3. AgroAmerica, a family-owned food corporation is investing $100 million across several projects, including a food ingredients refinery, a banana plantation, and an avocado plantation and processing plant, which will create 1,000 permanent jobs​ with living wages.
4. Nespresso (Nestlé) is supporting over 7,500 coffee producers with regenerative agriculture practices and training​​.
5. Target has committed to increasing its spending by $300 million in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras by 2033​.
6. Columbia Sportswear plans to create over 6,900 jobs in the region by purchasing up to $200 million in products​​.
7. Millicom is investing an additional $350 million by 2025 to expand and maintain its mobile and broadband networks​ in the region.

Those are plain and stubborn facts, not the political untruths being spread by Abbott and Trump. Lying, of course, has worked effectively in modern American politics, but there is a rising hope it’s time is almost done.