Accounts Of Abuse Emerge At The Texas Border

There’s little oversight or accountability for how Texas soldiers guarding the border treat migrants and asylum-seekers, critics say.

The family of four crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico, then walked for hours on U.S. soil between the river and the hulking steel border wall that runs through the area, avoiding the concertina wire strung along the river banks, trying to find a federal Border Patrol agent so they could surrender and pursue an asylum claim in the United States.

But the Texas National Guard saw them first. Soldiers have been deployed to the border since 2021, on the orders of the state’s right-wing governor.

The soldiers called them vulgar names. The father saw soldiers being aggressive with other migrants, forcing them back across the river, and so the family ran for the border wall.

A soldier approached them. The father held one of his two young sons close to his chest, he would later recall. The soldier hit the father in the chin with the butt of his rifle. Another soldier ran in front of the man’s wife and his other son, knocking them to the ground and kicking the son in the leg.

Guard members positioned trucks between the scene and the Rio Grande, blocking the view of anyone in Mexico. Nonetheless, the family made it to the wall and grabbed hold of it. One soldier told them they’d received orders to break the arms of people clinging to the wall, but the family stayed.