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Greg Abbott’s New Mexico Border Barrier Isn’t Doing Much—Besides Amusing Locals

Residents of El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico, agree illegal immigration is a problem, but the Texas governor’s newest effort is little more than a PR stunt.

If you’re making the short drive from El Paso to neighboring Sunland Park, the only indication you’d have that you’re crossing state lines is an announcement by GPS that sounds shortly after you cross the Anapra Bridge over the Rio Grande: “Welcome to New Mexico.” This is the same bridge beneath which, earlier this month, coils of concertina wire appeared, extending a couple of miles southeast along the Texas–New Mexico border. The new barrier was Texas governor Greg Abbott’s latest bit of theater intended to draw attention to migrant crossings into the Lone Star State. “Migrants are entering New Mexico illegally then crossing into Texas,” Abbott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, accompanying a photo of the Texas National Guard unfurling the wire, like a big Slinky toy with razor teeth. “We are stopping it.” Denizens of the New Mexican town of 17,000—no strangers to migrant traffic—found that hard to believe.

Robert Ardovino, who lives in El Paso but runs a restaurant in Sunland Park, was commuting to work one morning in early October when he first noticed the wire. He remembered chuckling: “That’s a big old waste of money,” Ardovino said. What really tickled him was that the Texas state line at this point extends across the far western bank of the Rio Grande; evidently, in laying the barrier on the eastern side, the governor had gotten his state line wrong. “My first thought was, ‘Man, that son of a bitch is barricading Texas from Texas,’ ” he recalled.

Ardovino doesn’t need to be told that Sunland Park is an axis for illegal immigration. He named his restaurant Ardovino’s Desert Crossing both as an homage to Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing and because it’s a frequent and popular transit point for migrants—and always has been.

The restaurant sits alongside a fledgling RV park populated by vintage trailers on a hill. The property offers a panoramic view of Sunland Park and its outskirts, including the border wall. On a recent afternoon, Ardovino pointed southeast toward the nearby Sierra de los Muleros—Spanish for “mule drivers’ mountain”—and noted the intricate network of footpaths, like scars in the hill, which straddles both sides of the border. “If there were cattle, you’d understand all the millions of trails through there, but there’s none,” he said. “These are all migrant trails. You go for a hike up there and follow any trail you want. They all lead to Mexico.”

Along the perimeter of his property, Ardovino erected a chain-link fence with razor wire on top last year, which set him back around $15,000. In the service and hospitality industries, immigration enforcement isn’t exactly good for business. “The first time a Border Patrol agent runs chasing someone into the dining room, I might as well just close the doors,” he said.

As we stood out on his property’s veranda, Ardovino suddenly pointed in the distance toward the desert basin: “Two migrants just ran right through there,” he said. Several minutes later, Ardovino’s dogs started barking, and I noticed a man, no more than a hundred yards from us, sprinting with his phone in hand. He stopped before a dirt road and ducked behind a mesquite bush, then charged forward again, crossing the path. “Guess he might get away,” Ardovino said. Just as soon as he’d uttered it, a Border Patrol truck came barreling down the dirt road, turning onto the one that the migrant had just crossed. The man had seemingly disappeared.

Sunland Park, perhaps best known for its casino and racetrack, has seen its fair share of physical infrastructure crop up in the name of border security. George W. Bush built a wall near town, which Trump refurbished. In 2019, a group of civilians, led by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, got in on the fray and started erecting a wall, before city officials stopped them. (Bannon was later indicted on federal mail-fraud charges for some of his private-wall-building activities, but was pardoned by Trump before his trial.) This latest move in Abbott’s controversial Operation Lone Star, a nearly $10-billion initiative that launched in 2021 ($11 million has been spent on concertina wire alone) is just one more physical barrier. “Until President Biden does his job to secure the border,” Andrew Mahaleris, the governor’s press secretary, wrote in an email, “Texas will continue stepping up to protect our borders and Texans from this crisis.”

A few months ago, officials from Juárez and Sunland Park met to discuss the potential to build a new international port of entry between their two cities. Almost everyone in the area agrees that effective measures are needed to control the flow of migrants into the U.S. “I hate to hear New York complain about five hundred immigrants,” Ardovino said, referring to the migrant crisis in the Big Apple, where more than 100,000 migrants and asylum seekers, including 13,000 that Abbott had bused, have arrived in the last year. It prompted New York City mayor Eric Adams to declare a state of emergency earlier this month. “We’re at fifteen hundred a day.”

In Sunland Park, illegal immigration has become an issue for the community’s younger population—teens who, through social media, are solicited to assist smugglers by shuttling groups of people in vehicles for a hefty price. And it’s not uncommon for migrants to cross into Texas after entering the U.S. through New Mexico. The governor’s team did not provide data on how many migrants do so, but Mary Stillinger, a criminal defense attorney in El Paso, said that of her cases involving illegal entry, approximately half of them involve migrants who crossed the state line. “But here’s the thing,” she said. “They’re coming on the roads. They’re getting picked up in vehicles in New Mexico and then driving over here.” She added, “I’m not sure what Governor Abbott’s going to do about that.”

Folks in Sunland Park aren’t convinced that the barrier works, or that the concertina wire is anything more than a stunt aimed at attracting TV news cameras. No matter how many miles of fence Abbott orders installed along the Texas-Mexico border, how many floating barriers he sets in the Rio Grande, and how many busloads of migrants he sends to northern states, the volume of illegal immigration to Texas continues to increase. Data provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency shows that in its El Paso sector, which includes western Texas and New Mexico, the number of migrants encountered by agents has more than doubled between 2021 and 2023, to 427,471. Examining Texas’s role alone in this sector, the numbers have gone up from 68,946 in 2021 to 257,643 in 2023. Across the whole southern border, that number has risen from 1.7 million in 2021 to nearly 2.5 million this year. Over the same time period, Texas has unfurled 70,000 rolls of concertina wire on Abbott’s orders.

“Human ingenuity trumps everything,” said Sunland Park fire chief Daniel Medrano, who spent 27 years working for the El Paso Fire Department before assuming his current role. All along the border wall, he said, you’ll find pieces of rope migrants use to scale it. Medrano mentioned he’d also recently seen a video of a young mother using a piece of a cardboard box to lift up a segment of concertina wire so that her kids could crawl underneath. “The problem with the United States is that we are reacting to a problem. We’re putting painkillers on a broken bone. There is a root problem that needs to be addressed.”

If Medrano’s phone rings, it’s often an emergency related to a migrant. This past summer was particularly busy because of the heat, which reached record highs. “We lost track of how many bodies we helped recover,” Medrano said. Last year, Medrano had a different problem in the form of the border wall, where more than a hundred falls occurred. He said he saw a lot of open fractures, where the skin is penetrated by one or more broken bones—particularly femurs, which are surrounded by major arteries that can cause heavy bleeding. He also saw many back and head injuries. Several migrants had died.

Of the latest concertina wire installation, Medrano said he didn’t have any reason to believe it would amount to anything more than one additional obstacle for first responders trying to access the river during water rescues. Not to mention, Medrano said, the wire’s northern end stops before the Anapra Bridge, offering an easy pathway between states. “If I wanted to go around it, it’s very simple to go around it.”

I wanted to see the wire up close, so I drove to a convenience store in Sunland Park, right beside the Rio Grande, and wandered on foot down to the river. As Medrano told me, in so many ways, El Paso and Sunland Park are interconnected. New Mexico controls the flow of water in the Rio Grande here. In late October, it had limited the river’s flow one hundred miles upstream at the Caballo Dam, so the river here in Sunland Park was shrinking, revealing muddy islands and small pools of deeper water. Across the river on the eastern bank, the steel wire gleamed. I wanted to get a closer look and contemplated getting my feet wet to cross the riverbed. Then, I remembered the bridge. I clambered ashore and crossed over: It was as easy as that.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/new-mexico-border-wire-abbott/

A PR stunt you have fallen for and are defending with all of your might.

I said something about the efficacy of Abbott's attempts to keep out illegals??

No, I didn't... more LIES and GOALPOST MOVING.



More third-grade-level lame-ass comments. I don't know how you made it out of high school, maybe you didn't.






Study the pic, it will take about eight seconds...

If the razor-wire wasn't working, why did Sleepy Joe send people to raise it and allow more illegals in?
Keeping the same picture in mind (if you're capable), why would anyone need wire cutters?


"Hey Joe, people are gonna commit crimes anyway, what should we do??"
"Ummm, let's just hand out guns on the street corners."

Thank GOD this is almost over -- 13 months to go.

You were sucked in by another Republican PR stunt and all you have to respond to that is a personal attack against me. If anyone should be questioning a persons educational background based on that, it should be yours. Where is your evidence that Biden "sent people to do it"? I' sure he was in contact with the the foreman of the forklift operator to give those orders. lmo Just more factless accusations by you and your kind. You claim there's only 13 months to go? I see you're already planning to be an election denier.... again.

Go ahead and vote for the guy with 91 indictments against him. That speaks volumes about your character.

Texas sues Biden administration seeking to stop federal agents from cutting razor wire on border

Fake news??

Can you explain how that is connected to the picture you posted and what evidence you have that even suggests that "Sleepy Joe send people to raise it and allow more illegals in"? And you talk about other people moving the goal posts. I understand that Biden sees no sense in continuing what's nothing more than another Republican PR stunt. Of course that has nothing to do with the accusations you were making that he actually sent people to do what was contained in that picture. Rather than try to address that it was you who are moving the goal posts.

Because they've been cutting and moving razor wire for months. You haven't noticed because you keep your eyes covered and fingers in your ears.


A federal judge just ruled on it a few days ago.

Federal judge temporarily halts razor wire removal at border


So let me get this straight... since I'm the one "falling for a publicity stunt".

You're saying it's actually Texas moving that wire and just telling the world "because Joe Biden"?


You CANNOT possibly be that dumb.

I'll tell what I'm not dumb enough for. To try and claim that Biden ordered anyone to do this. The article plainly states that border patrol agents are doing this. You have provided nothing to link that to any orders coming from The White House. But keep throwing darts. I'm sure you'll land one somewhere eventually. There's a very tall ladder between the actions of border patrol agents and the oval office. So far you haven't managed to climb a single rung on the ladder.

Who is in charge of the border patrol?

Yep. You're right.

It's the Trump administration that's in charge of U.S. Border Patrol. The judge just got confused.

Done with amateur hour.

It's the Trump administration, Arch.

Trump did all this.

Do you have any evidence that the forklift is being operated by a border patrol agent? Let me show you how easy this is to cross. Nobody needs a forklift or help. They crawl under it all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EhkoRvhkLpQ

Other than that all you have done is show that there's a court case where Biden wants to remove the wire and Texas is fighting that measure in court.

As you can see, all they do is have one person uses a piece of clothing, hold up the razor wire and other crawl underneath it. You have fallen for a PR stunt hook, line and sinker. Even the video you posted looks like a PR stunt to further an agenda with zero evidence that the border patrol or any government entity is involved. I've simply waited to show you this to see how deep you would dig your rabbit hole.

And of course arch waited to come and pull up the rear because you made false claims you can't back up but he liked what you were saying. lmao

I can also escape lava run from a volcano. You know whats easier? Not having to escape lava run from a volcano.

Yep, yep. No DNA evidence. It must all be a ruse.

You lose, again, with your insanity laden goalpost-moving littering of gibberish throughout this thread.


Your president is a feckless leader incapable of overseeing the crisis of running out of peanut butter. You know it, everyone knows it. Every problem we've had since he took over has been exacerbated by he and his incapable staff of "firsts'.

But again, at least it's almost over.

He's your president too. Unless of course you are a citizen of a different country.

So you have zero evidence this has anything to do with the border patrol, I've shown you how easy it is and how easily these immigrants go under the wire and all you can do is move the goal posts and go into a personal rant. You have been sucked in again.

So your claim is the heavy equipment used by the border patrol isn't marked as such?

And you claim I lose?

MURDOCK: ‘Border’ Is Where Biden’s Normalcy Goes to Die

(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA)


Joe Biden became president largely by promising to Make America Normal Again.

The shambolic U.S.-Mexico “border” confirms how Biden shattered that promise. There is nothing normal about the coast-to-coast disaster over which he governs, thanks largely to Biden’s deeply abnormal definition of border security.

Under Biden, the southern “border” has become a giant, open-air staging ground from which illegal aliens bludgeon U.S. territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 1,671,266 illegal aliens during President Donald J. Trump’s final 27 months in power. In Biden’s first 27 months, they encountered a breathtaking 5,249,144 illegals—up a skin-crawling 314%.

In Fiscal Year 2020, the last that Trump fully controlled, 69,000 illegal migrants were detected on the “border” but got away into America’s interior. In FY 2022 (all Biden’s watch), gotaways hit 599,000—up a mind-blowing 768% versus FY ’20.

Federal agents busted an Afghan illegal alien on May 10 at Otay Mesa, California, near San Diego. His fingerprints confirmed his spot on the terrorist watch list.

This fanatic is hardly alone. Terror-list designees arrested at the “border” have exploded from three in FY 2020, with Trump fully in control, to 15 in FY 2021, 98 in FY 2022, and 85 through April—just halfway through FY 2023.

And these were those who were intercepted.

Aside from the 183 suspected terrorists apprehended on Biden’s watch, how many walk America’s streets today? Who knows?

As if the U.S. needed more homeless people, illegal aliens who get waved into America now clog the sidewalks and alleys of El Paso and other cities.

Even more illegals receive court dates for asylum hearings—in 2026, 2027, and beyond. What will they do until then? Who knows?

Free bus rides whisk illegal aliens to Chicago, where some have slept on the floors of local police stations. A plan to house 250 to 500 illegals in the abandoned South Shore High School enraged predominantly black locals.

“Send them back!” some yelled at a community meeting on the matter. One protester’s placard read: “Build the Wall 2024.”

“We have no jobs in our community, and we have been fighting for jobs for decades,” resident Natasha Dunn told the Chicago Sun-Times. “So, please tell me, how is this fair?”

Rather than instruct illegal aliens on incoming buses to return to the southern “border” and swim home, Mayor Eric Adams, D-NYC, tried housing them in government-school gymnasia. Parents erupted, and Adams backed down.

Regardless, he still shoehorns illegals into luxury hotel rooms that cost taxpayers some $258-per-night each. Cost to aliens: $0.00.

Midtown Manhattan’s legendary Roosevelt Hotel is becoming an illegal-alien shelter.

“Almost 50 percent of those hotel rooms are taken up by migrant asylum seekers that [sic] we are paying for,” Adams said. “So instead of monies coming from people who are visiting us and spending in our tourism, in our Broadway plays, instead of them using those hotels, we are using those hotels.”

“New York’s combined state and local hotel taxes total 14.75%,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s Ira Mehlman observed. “So, not only is the city paying to house the migrants, they are losing substantial revenues on hotel occupancy taxes.”

These are just a few glimpses of the chaos that flows downhill from Biden’s busted “border.” Worse of all, this is neither an accident nor incompetence. At this pace, Biden’s deliberate policy will vacuum 9.3 million illegal aliens into America before his current term ends.

Biden and his comrades are betting that these illegals are Future Democrats of America who will be so grateful for being allowed to invade the USA that they will vote Democrat, flip GOP states Democrat, permanently transform the White House into the private property of the Democrat National Committee, and devolve America into a neo-Marxist, one-party state.

In November 2024, Biden and the Democrats deserve to vanish beneath an electoral landslide that is anything but normal.


https://headlineusa.com/murdock-border-biden-normalcy-die/



Nothing to see here, folks. It's all a PR stunt!

Since you are so tweaked out that I have no evidence that it's the same people that have been moving razor wire for almost a year... and want to go with your usual "No DNA, no proof"... why don't you go ahead and show me proof that it's NOT Biden's Border Patrol.

I'll wait.

So once again you move the goal post. What does that have to do with your claim that a border agent was operating a fork lift and helping immigrants to cross the border? Let me tell you. Nothing. Once you were shown to be wrong you pivoted to something else like you always do. Take the L.

The border is a mess. When did anyone claim any different? Sometimes it's less of a mess and sometimes more of a mess.

Not only don't you have DNA proof, you don't have any proof. There are no Border Patrol markings on the equipment and there's no way to identify the operator.

I guess you forgot how making accusations work. The one throwing out accusations with no evidence has the burden of proving those accusations. Only in Trumplandia does it work the other way around.

"Sometimes it's less of a mess and sometimes more of a mess."




No truer words ever spoken.

So, prove it's not Biden's Border Patrol... I demand evidence.

From a person making accusations that has no evidence that's hilarious.

Don't cop out.

Where's the evidence it's not Border Patrol??

You've been raving about evidence for two days. Where's yours??

So far we have: Pit can't find any "Border Patrol markings" on the front forks of the equipment from 500 feet away... there has got to be more than that!


I mean, we don't want to be forced to believe it's the same people that have been doing it for nearly a year, have received a federal court order to stop, and are being sued by the state of Texas.


Are you starting to realize how ridiculous you sound yet??

You sound like MTG telling me I need to prove there's no such thing as Jewish Space Lasers. I'll tell you the same thing i would tell her. I'm not the one who claimed there are Jewish Space lasers.

That's correct, you have no evidence. I provided you with a link that shows immigrants need nothing more than a shirt to lift the wire and crawl underneath it. It shows them doing so. They don't need someone to lift it with a fork lift. That's clear evidence that this "great razor wire barrier" has zero impact in preventing immigrants from coming into our country. That it's purely nothing more than a PR stunt by Abott.

That's more evidence than you've shown in this entire thread. I realize that you have dug your rabbit hole so deep you can't climb out of it now. If you need a ladder to accomplish that just send the GPS coordinates and I will bring you one.

I get it. You've made a fool of yourself again, now you want to argue the pros and cons of making one's way through razor wire. Every argument from your side is "they're going to get through anyway". It's always the go-to box on the flowchart to evade any legitimate argument. Your president sucks. He's created a disaster at the border and does nothing to fix it.

Enjoy your loss. You're like 0-32 on the week. Maybe eat some smart pills next week.

At least MY President isn't running from the law.

As for all the crap he's being accused of, show me PROOF... All you and the GOP has is guess work and hopes. I can't wait until they impeach him then we'll see what's under the hood. Just my guess, but I bet they won't impeach him. that would require them to show all the cards...

By the way I keep hearing about how bad the economy is, but all indicators are saying it's strong.. Inflation is up but we'll see that drop pretty much like it always does.

You got no real reason to dislike Biden,,, just what Fox News tells you to think.. Good luck with that.

Nice immigration post.

Let me sum up that word salad...

"Biden good, Trump baaaad". Same old, same old, groundhog's day drivel you've been slobbering for three years.


I actually like Biden, in a "met this guy in the park walking the dog" kinda way. I'm sure I'd walk away thinking he's a great guy.

As far as a leader? The worst in the history of the U.S. presidency. Every time I think it can't possibly get more terrible, he says "hold my kool-aid".

By the time he gets the boot, even you will be relieved. You won't admit he did a damned thing wrong -- but you'll be relieved.

Drama for the sake of drama is what GoPeRs do… They have no answers, just bitches and complaints.

And I would say the reason it was lifted was for humanitarian aid, to keep them from dying by trying to pass anyway. I don’t know for sure, but I do know Biden isn’t letting illegals in just to let them in, that’s as ridiculous as saying Trump won in 2020.

Why would they be dying? They can walk right through the razor wire. Right Pit??

Talk about two drastic POVs... one lib says the razor wire is killing them, the other says it's you just lift it with a jacket and voila!

PR stunt or deadly obstacle, I wonder which one it is.

Either way it was deplorable.

Texas says Border Patrol responded to razor wire lawsuit by bringing out a forklift

Benjamin Wermund
Washington Bureau
Oct. 27, 2023
Updated: Oct. 27, 2023 5:11 p.m.


WASHINGTON — Texas is seeking a restraining order against Border Patrol after the state says federal agents responded to its lawsuit alleging the destruction of state-owned razor wire by trading bolt cutters for an “industrial-strength” forklift.

In a motion filed Friday, the state claims that two days after Attorney General Ken Paxton sued earlier this week to stop Border Patrol from cutting through the miles of razor wire the state has placed along the Rio Grande, the federal government on Thursday brought out a forklift to pick up spools of wire to let a large group of migrants through.

The filing, which included a picture of the incident and a sworn statement from a Texas Military Department sergeant who witnessed it, deemed the forklift a “brazen escalation” and “an affront” to Texas.

“This court should immediately grant a temporary restraining order to enjoin defendants from continuing to damage, destroy, or otherwise meddle with Texas’s concertina wire fence until the court can rule,” the filing said.

Border Patrol has warned that the wire is keeping agents from reaching at-risk migrants — including families with infants and unaccompanied children — and increasing the risk of drownings as some struggle to leave the water. Agents have cut through the wire periodically in the past.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the filing. A spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week that “Border Patrol agents have a responsibility under federal law to take those who have crossed onto U.S. soil without authorization into custody for processing, as well as to act when there are conditions that put our workforce or migrants at risk.”

Texas alleges Border Patrol has been ripping up more wire than ever before over the past few weeks, pointing in its original lawsuit to more than 20 instances of agents seizing or cutting wire since Sept. 20. The lawsuit argues agents have no authority to damage or seize state property that is not on federal land and their actions are thwarting state border operations.

In the latest filing, Brian Cooney, a staff sergeant for the Texas Military Department, said he watched as the Border Patrol dug the forklift into the wire and “lifted the barrier high enough to pull out of the ground the fencing stakes that kept the fence in place, and held it suspended in the air for approximately 20 minutes.”

Cooney said federal agents began to help 310 migrants through the gap and did not put the stakes back in place after, meaning the fence would have to be repaired by state engineers.

Afterward, Cooney said, the agents parked the forklift up a nearby hill.

“It seemed likely that BP might use the machinery again to lift the concertina wire fence,” Cooney said.

While the lawsuit ratcheted up tensions between federal immigration officials and the state over the use of razor wire, Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw this week called Border Patrol agents “good team players” who work “seamlessly” with state officials on the ground.

“We enjoy their cooperation and coordination,” McCraw said in an interview Thursday. “There’s no friction.”


https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-wire-forklift-18452738.php

#theyarelyingitsadeepfakefromTrump
#itsallaPRstunt
#checkthelicenseplateprobablygregabbotts
#whydonttheyjumptherazorwirelikespiderman?

Oh snap

Here's the foolishness in your premise. Border patrol serves no function that would give them any reason to possess such a piece of equipment in the first place. What you pictured was a commercial grade construction forklift. I did show you that all one needs is a short to lift the razor wire. Something you can try and dodge all you like. Of course those who support Abbott have made "allegations". But allegations doesn't mean it's factual. Of course those speaking for Abbott claim that the border patrol needed a commercial grade fork lift to lift 50 pounds of razor wire and once again you have bought into it.

Maybe you're not clear on what the word allegation means?

They can crawl right under it and they do.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EhkoRvhkLpQ

Yeah no kidding…Biden driving a forklift. Lol

Doesn’t take much to know who has handled razor wire before… it’s not barbed wire. Got an old friend with a 7 inch scar on his neck from mishandling concertina wire (coiled razor wire) in the Army. He’d tell you what that jacket would do against it…

Tell Pit, he seems to think it's "easy as pie".

No matter what is done there will always be a way around it. People can dig tunnels under jails, doesn't mean you tear down all the jails and let the criminals run free. Anything that is done is better than nothing at all.

No [censored], Sherlock.

Done with your shenanigans. You've made a fool of yourself... again. Enjoy your L. You're worse than the Browns, just when you think you've seen it all -- a new way to lose.

I supplied you a video showing how easy it is. You seem to deny the existence of it.


Even things you've been shown not to work at all it appears.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."