AUSTIN, Texas — The inspector general for the state’s Department of Public Safety has launched an investigation into a trooper’s alarming report that state-driven border security efforts have led to horrific repercussions for immigrants, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Internal DPS communications obtained by the Washington Examiner revealed how the department communicated for two weeks about how to handle one employee’s concerns, which were first brought to the department's attention on July 3. The complaint alleged that immigrants had been hurt, and even killed, as a direct result of the state's increasingly hostile barbed wire and water buoy barriers at the border.
“The entire group was exhausted hungry and tired. We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the trooper wrote in a July 3 email to his superior obtained by the Washington Examiner. “We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.
That same day, the trooper treated an adult man who had a large laceration on his leg from trying to free a child on top of a “trap” in the river and, in doing so, cut his leg open. DHS provided various pictures of the wounded immigrants. “I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star; I believe we ... have stepped over a line into the in humane [sic]. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God,” the trooper wrote. “We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”
“Crossing through the concertina wire without protective gear is no doubt likely to result in an injury. This is self evident, but we need to ensure that migrants are reminded of this by signage and continued verbal warnings,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying [to] cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.
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