The Texas Department of Public Safety reported Monday that four people, including a baby, died trying to cross the Rio Grande River on the US-Mexico border. This was reported by the news portal The Hill.
Two of the victims died last Saturday. According to Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesman for the department, a baby and a woman drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande River at Eagle Pass. Their bodies were recovered by state officials.
During that event, two other people who were also trying to cross the Rio Grande managed to survive.
The other two fatalities recorded in recent days were men, and they drowned in the same section of the Río Grande, although on different days. One died on Sunday, while the other drowned on Monday.
Until now, the identity of the deceased victims is unknown, because, according to Olivarez, none of them carried identification documents with them.
The deaths occurred after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a package of border security laws that included establishing a buoy barrier in the Rio Grande.
“These buoys will allow us to prevent people from reaching the border,” Abbott said when approving the regulations.
These buoys are intended to deter migrants from crossing the border by making it extremely difficult to swim across the Rio Grande.
According to information from The Hill, Eagle Pass – the place where the victims drowned – was the first section of the Rio Grande in which the buoy barrier was established.
However, it is not the first time that deaths have been recorded in the Eagle Pass sector. According to The Hill, nine people drowned in that area last fall.
The implementation of the buoys is part of a strategy by the Abbott administration to stop the entry of undocumented immigrants into the state of Texas, a situation that the state governor has described as a “crisis.”
Likewise, Governor Abbott has accused, on several occasions, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, of “keeping the border gates open”, which has caused, in his opinion, an “unprecedented crisis”.
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