Texas takes down border razor wire

EL PASO, Texas ( Border Report ) – The Texas military has taken down razor wire – meant to discourage illegal immigration from Mexico – along a stretch of the Rio Grande from Downtown El Paso to Old Fort Bliss.

Border Report cameras on both sides captured the striking sight of several large piles of worn barbwire on that mile-long stretch of the river, overlooking Juarez, Mexico. That visual evidence underscores the removal of the razor wire.

It was not immediately clear why the barrier came down. There was no immediate answer to emailed questions from Border Report to the Texas Military Department, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and the Department of Public Safety asking if this represents a change of strategy, is maintenance-related, or perhaps a harbinger of things to come.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted photos of a welder working on a fence-like structure two days ago. “Texas National Guard soldiers construct barriers that will be placed along the border in El Paso. Texas continues to use all possible strategies to deter and repeal illegal entry into our state,” Abbott said on X on July 2 .

In any event, the state’s efforts to guard the border were still evident on Friday.

DPS vehicles and unmarked pickup trucks could be seen going up and down the stretch of the border without razor wire that — before the barrier going up last year — was a favorite “give up” spot for migrants trying to surrender to the U.S. Border Patrol and claim political asylum.

The barrier erected last year immediately reduced border crossings in the area and displaced people to walk several miles east in search of a place they could ford the river. Abbott said he ordered it in place without effective Biden administration enforcement . Later, he claimed the state’s efforts to curtail illegal immigration had displaced people to cross through other states.

Migrant encounters have been trending down all along the border for the past few months, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. They had plummeted since early June when the Biden administration threatened to cross the border to asylum seekers coming between ports of entry if a 2,500 threshold was reached any given week.

Border Report camera crews recorded a single migrant going across the Rio Grande from Juarez to El Paso since the razor wire came down.

Juan Carlos Lopez Morales, a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Juarez, said he hopes the Texas barrier comes down for good. But he also admitted that if it stays down, it could encourage migrants to use that path into the United States again.

“It shouldn’t have been there. It’s inhumane treatment toward migrants,” Lopez said. “Now, to take it away, it should have been done from the start because it was not appropriate to treat migrants that way; some also will see it as an easy way to cross. That will motivate more migrants to move toward that section” of the U.S. border.

Lopez underscored the complexity of the issue, stating that the movement of people across the U.S.-Mexico border cannot be resolved by simply ‘putting up or taking down barriers.’ He stressed the need for comprehensive, clear, and humane guidelines in both Mexico and the United States to regulate this movement.

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