AUSTIN, Texas — Former El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke is calling on President Joe Biden to take aggressive action against Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) following a trooper’s alarming report that state-driven border security efforts have harmed immigrants.
O'Rourke, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and governor in 2022, urged the White House to unleash the full power of the federal government against Abbott. Abbott has sent more than 10,000 soldiers and police to the border since 2021 to respond to a record-high number of illegal crossings from Mexico, which he said Biden has not done enough to stop.
"If @potus does not stop Abbott now, he will find new ways to hurt and kill people at the border," O'Rourke tweeted.
Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner obtained a July 3 email that a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper-medic deployed to Eagle Pass, Texas, had sent to his superior. The DPS employee raised human rights concerns about how the state's Operation Lone Star.
The complaint alleged that immigrants had been hurt and even killed as a direct result of the state's barbed wire and water buoy barriers at the border. The trooper's name is being withheld for privacy reasons.
“I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star; I believe we ... have stepped over a line into the in humane [sic]. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God,” the trooper wrote. “We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”
O'Rourke's plea Wednesday was a follow-up to his initial call on Monday for Washington to take action.
"There is one person who has the power to stop Abbott. Stop him from deploying razor wire & medieval drowning devices designed to ensnare & mutilate," O'Rourke wrote in a tweet Monday. "Stop every illegal thing he’s doing on the border that ends up killing human beings. Mr. President, we need you to act."
Internal communications from DPS showed that the trooper's email was forwarded throughout the department for two weeks as officials debated how to handle the concerns.
DPS spokesman Travis Considine on Tuesday defended the state's actions.
“There is not a directive or policy that instructs Troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river," Considine wrote in an email.
DPS Director Steve McCraw responded multiple times, including calling for an audit of the department's policies. The DPS inspector general has formally launched an investigation into a trooper’s claims.
The trooper's email stated that he had been working on June 25 when he encountered “120 people camped out along the fence line,” including small children and nursing babies. The trooper said he was twice given orders to "push people back into the water to go to Mexico."
On June 30, a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire was “pressed back” by Texas National Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them.” The girl fainted shortly after and was then extricated and transferred to the trooper for emergency care, according to the account.
That same day, the trooper treated an adult man who had a large laceration on his leg from trying to free a child on top of a “trap” in the river and, in doing so, cut his leg open. DHS provided various pictures of the wounded immigrants.
The trooper's email listed a boy who broke his leg and a 19-year-old pregnant woman "doubled over" in the wire and in “obvious pain” as she had a miscarriage.
The following day, Border Patrol informed the trooper of a separate incident in which a mother and two children drowned trying to cross the river, which the trooper stated was because the casualty wire “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper.”
The injuries have not stopped since then. In the first two weeks of July, Border Patrol’s Del Rio, Texas, regional office listed six incidents in which immigrants who crossed the border illegally were injured and received elevated medical care as a result of trying to pass through circular concertina wire along the U.S. shoreline.
House Democrats have also called this week on the Department of Homeland Security and State Department to intervene and stop Abbott's border security operation.
Abbott issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, doubling down on the mission.
"Operation Lone Star agency partners use verbal warnings and signage to direct migrants attempting to illegally cross from Mexico into Texas to use ports of entry to protect the lives of migrants, DPS troopers, and Texas National Guard soldiers," Abbott said in a statement. "Until President Biden reverses his open border policies and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue protecting Texans and Americans from the chaos along the border."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.