EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – U.S. Border Patrol encounters with unauthorized migrants have fallen drastically since June. Still, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott remains concerned about the 58,000 or so that are getting through the Rio Grande or the border wall each month.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have allowed more illegal immigrants to cross our southern border than every before,” Abbott tweeted on Saturday. “Texas is fighting back. We are tripling our razor wire border barriers to deny illegal entry into our state and our country.”
Three days later, Texas Army National Guard troops were laying fencing and additional rows of concertina wire along the Rio Grande in the El Paso area. On Tuesday, a KTSM camera crew witnessed as soldiers laid the razor wire and installed fencing on the riverbank that faces not Mexico, but New Mexico west of El Paso.
Texas earlier this year extended its barrier at a spot where the river stops running parallel to Mexico and turns north into New Mexico out of concern the illegal smuggling activity going on in New Mexico would spill into Texas. This summer, several migrants caught by strong river currents were rescued by border agents and first responders from the El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico, fire departments.
The Santa Teresa (New Mexico) Station of the Border Patrol remains one of the busiest in the nation in terms of migrant smuggling activity; many of the 171 encounters with deceased migrants this fiscal year have occurred in the desert near Sunland Park.
The New Mexico-facing concertina barrier extends from West Paisano Drive to the Texas side of the Anapra, N.M., bridge between El Paso and Sunland Park.