AUSTIN, Texas — The recent deaths of two people who were recovered alongside Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) floating border buoys were misconstrued by the Mexican government in a way that faulted Texas border security measures, according to the governor’s office.
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris rebuked the Mexico Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday for linking the drowning to a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys in a shallow part of the Rio Grande between Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
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“The Mexican government is flat-out wrong,” Mahaleris said in a statement. “To be clear, preliminary information points to the drowning occurring before the body was even near the barriers. The Texas Department of Public Safety previously reported to Border Patrol the dead body floating upstream from the barriers in the Rio Grande.”
Mexican authorities put out a statement on Wednesday that said U.S. officials first reported finding the body entangled in the buoy system.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) notified the Mexican Consulate in Eagle Pass that at about 2:35 p.m. they found a lifeless body caught in the southern part of the buoys that were installed in the Rio Grande River,” the ministry said.
Mahaleris added that the Mexican government did acknowledge that the second body was found “miles upstream from the marine barriers.”
Texas DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez said the river’s southbound flow led the deceased person to float “down into the buoy” but had not led to the death.
The 1,000-foot-long portion of the river where the line of buoys was installed was in a shallow area easy to walk across; therefore, not an area where someone could have drowned as a result of the buoys, Olivarez said.
“The water is between knee and waist level,” Olivarez said. “There’s no way the body would have drowned there. … There’s nothing in the buoy — no objects, no sharp objects, no wire, no hook.”
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Abbott’s barrier, which was installed in July and covers less than 20% of one mile of the river, was a “violation of our sovereignty.”
“We express our concern about the impact on the human rights and personal safety of immigrants that these state policies will have, which go in the opposite direction to the close collaboration between our country and the federal government of the United States,” the ministry said in a statement.
Abbott’s office shot back that drownings in the Rio Grande were nothing new.
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“Unfortunately, drownings in the Rio Grande by people attempting to cross illegally are all too common. As was reported in early July before the marine barriers were installed, four people drowned trying to cross the river,” said Mahaleris. “This is a result of the reckless open border policies of President Biden and President Lopez Obrador. In fact, before Texas deployed barriers, the United Nations declared the U.S.-Mexico border the deadliest land crossing in the world.
“If President Biden and President Lopez Obrador truly cared about human life, they would do their jobs and secure the border,” Mahaleris said.
