On a late-April weekend, I went down to Eagle Pass to look at Operation Lone Star (OLS), Governor Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar piece of political theater that has targeted immigrants at the Texas-Mexico border. I went with a group that I’m a member of called Never Again Action, a national Jewish organization opposing the deportation machine. The group is inspired by Jewish history and values and draws inspiration from the passage in the Torah that says, “You must not oppress foreigners. You know what it’s like to be a foreigner, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.”
In this sense, fighting for immigrant justice is, to Jews, a religious and cultural obligation.
We chose to visit Shelby Park, a 47-acre green space that abuts the Rio Grande and thus the international border with Mexico; you can easily see the international bridge from the park. From January 2024 through April of this year, this area was effectively closed to the public as state troopers and National Guard members took it over, ostensibly to stop border crossings.
We went down there to try and connect with locals such as Amerika Garcia Grewal, a community activist who has been organizing for several years. She got involved in part because of the state’s takeover of Shelby Park, one of the few public green spaces available to the entire community. Maverick County, where Eagle Pass is located, has a 23 percent poverty rate. There are areas of the county, just beyond the Eagle Pass city limits, that lack access to running water. The State of Texas, meanwhile, has spent more than $11 billion on OLS over the past four years. Garcia Grewal informed us that OLS has also caused a brain drain, or rather a brain-force-field effect, on the city. She relayed how several professors hired by the local university, Sul Ross State-Eagle Pass, have declined their offers after learning of the border security operation in the region. The same goes for doctors who received job offers at local hospitals.
OLS and all of the border mania don’t just affect people directly on the border either. In the town of Brackettville—in Kinney County—we spoke to a local organizer about the effects on this town nearly an hour’s drive from the international divide. Local artist and activist Gage Brown told us of multiple high-speed chases, initiated by Texas state police over minor traffic violations, that resulted in massive property damage and loss of life in the county. A 7-year old girl was killed. Five other children were seriously injured. How again is this making Texans safer?
While traveling through the area and talking to local people, I couldn’t help but think how these resources might have been used differently. How many of the region’s children could have been sent to college? How many medical bills could have been paid? How much infrastructure built? How many teachers hired? Doctors, engineers, builders—people who could have put their talents into something helpful for this community—as opposed to wasting all of this labor on a half-baked political stunt whose only results are more positive right-wing media coverage for Abbott and more destruction wrought on an already marginalized population.
Aside from the absolute moral catastrophe that this all represents, it also doesn’t even work! All of this Sturm und Drang about an “invasion” and “building a wall,” and I can tell you that it doesn’t work. The wall isn’t even needed, as we were told that Customs and Border Protection has an array of radar and video surveillance networks that easily pick up when a migrant has crossed the river. As for an “invasion,” this couldn’t be further from the truth. The handful of bedraggled migrants who show up begging for asylum, often malnourished and in need of medical attention, hardly constitute an “invasion force” in any meaningful definition of that phrase. So, on top of everything else, there is the egregious insult that this entire thing is based on a massive lie.
This is part of our reason for visiting as well. We can see that, since the 9/11 era, what began as an attack on civil liberties for the purpose of combating “terrorism” has been the subject of mission creep. The target moved from foreign terrorists to simply foreign-born immigrants. Now it is beginning to spread to legally present, foreign-born students who dare express an opinion critical of government policy. How much longer until citizens are targeted?
As a Jewish-led organization, we abhor this turn of events. In addition to our religious tradition, which commands us to fight for social justice and protect the innocent, we also draw on our cultural and historical memory. Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents came to the United States fleeing similar conditions afflicting current arrivals, seeking a country guided by democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, so different from the tyranny and oppression of their homelands.
We are also inspired by the times America has failed to live up to these values. Our name, Never Again Action, is in reference to the principle that something like the Holocaust must never be allowed to reoccur. As American Jews, we remember the episode of the S.S. St. Louis: Jews fleeing Europe before the outbreak of World War II were turned away by U.S. authorities. Many were later killed by the Nazis. That era of American policy was, like today, guided by an anti-immigrant hysteria whipped up by those in power. We cannot help but see the parallels. So we seek an immigration system now that respects the rights of immigrants and refugees, consistent with international law and U.S. treaty obligations.
When one goes to the border and looks out across the landscape, the built environment makes the consequences of recent U.S. policy painfully clear.
On the one side, the American bank of the river is a dead patch of dirt, covered in razor wire, shipping container barricades, and armed soldiers assisted by drones. The land of liberty indeed. On the other side is Mexico. Lush vegetation and greenery cover the banks of the river. It is a pleasing and refreshing sight in this dusty and arid environment. I am told that it was once quite lovely on the American side as well, and that it used to be commonplace for people on both sides to frequently engage with the river—through swimming, fishing, boating, and other pastimes. Our group hopes that through our meager efforts, something similar might one day take place again.
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