By Medha Palnati
Former President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are weaponizing migrants at the southern border to distract from their own crimes and advance their political careers.
Migrants crossing the southern border endure the most treacherous conditions I’ve seen, fleeing deadly acts of violence on their homes and families. Many make the journey because they have nothing, yet the journey still manages to rob them of what little they have left – their dignity, their health, their loved ones.
I’ve worked with doctors from across the United States who consistently identify migrant patients at the University Medical Center in El Paso as the sickest they’ve seen: limbs missing, mangled ankles, body-encompassing burns, razor-wire wounds, infectious diseases, starvation and dehydration-related conditions usually confined to the developing world. I’ve seen horrors as a second-year medical student that many of my professors have never encountered.
This is no accident.
For decades, our leaders have implemented policies that intentionally excluded Latin American migrants – creating a chaotic picture which political leaders now weaponize in their favor.
The project to create and sustain the most militarized border in the world between two countries not at war started in the 1940s, long before Trump, and continued through the 1990s in response to rising xenophobia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush authorized the construction of over 700 miles of border wall, which continued under each subsequent administrations.
The border wall, along with metering, a practice where Customs and Border Protection agents refuse to process asylum seekers at ports of entry, make it more difficult for families in need of food, shelter, and medical care to seek asylum.
Now, additional barriers stand in the way, including indefinite detention, an online asylum registration system, and military tactics employed by state and local police in Texas. The most impoverished, most vulnerable, most in need of safety are left in the dust trying to navigate these barriers. Many never make it through the asylum process.
These practices have not deterred people from crossing the border. Instead, they have forced asylum seekers into more precarious situations, often ending in dire health circumstances. But our political figures paint a different picture; it is in their best interest to erase the faces of asylum seekers, labeling them as criminals when awaiting proper documentation may have meant enduring additional horrific violence.
There is chaos at the border. But this is the product of our policy makers’ and law enforcement officers’ own doing. I have yet to see federal or state funding allocated in any meaningful manner to alleviate the growing number of people in need of safety along the border.
Billions of dollars are spent on deterrence tactics and transportation for migrants outside of Texas, but there has never been a government-run shelter system, legal assistance program, or employment opportunity for those seeking asylum.
Instead, these responsibilities fall into the hands of NGOs along the border, and one dear to my heart now faces closure. Attorney General Paxton – previously impeached for misusing his office to help a campaign donor, facing two counts of securities fraud with up to 99 years in prison, under FBI investigation for corruption charges, and in jeopardy of losing his legal license for attempts to overturn the 2020 election – is threatening to close Annunciation House, a 46-year-old migrant shelter in El Paso.
His deliberately harmful claims that the organization is “facilitating illegal entry (of migrants) to the United States, alien harboring, [and] human smuggling” come just after a judge set Paxton’s trial date for first-degree felony charges for April 15. The distraction tactic could not be clearer.
But as I awoke to streams of articles and texts of astonished disbelief from my co-volunteers at the border, I recognized the strategy. Using “chaos” at the border that they’ve created, white supremacists in power draw a curtain over their abuse of office, hiding their attempts to turn America into an autocracy.
Former President Trump employs this same tactic, labeling the people at the border who I’ve grown to know and love through my work with Annunciation House as criminals “poisoning our country.”
Our leaders’ own policies created this chaos. Under it, autocracy thrives. Trump now leads the 2024 Republican presidential primary despite facing four indictments for a combined 91 criminal counts.
Abbott has weaponized the humanitarian crisis at the border as well, using it to push the bounds of his authority, spending millions on Operation Lone Star, classifying illegal border-crossing as a criminal offense, and most recently allowing state officials and police to arrest anyone suspected of illegal immigration.
Paxton’s most recent attack on Annunciation House is likely the first in a series of efforts to close migrant shelters and criminalize humanitarian aid at the border. But don’t let these tactics fool you, they will only create more chaos as vulnerable families occupy the streets. Beneath that chaos, autocrats rise to power.
Medha Palnati is a second-year medical student at Albany Medical College in upstate New York. She spent the summer working with refugees and migrants on the border, with a focus on making health care accessible to the most impoverished.
