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‘TEXAS IS FIGHTING FOR ITS RIGHT TO LAY CONCERTINA WIRE’  
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Janine Jackson interviews Aron Thorn
February 7, 2024
FAIR
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_ We have gotten to this place by spending all of this money we could
use welcoming people, putting welcoming infrastructure in place,
we’re using it on enforcement. _

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JANINE JACKSON: Many see a looming constitutional crisis in Texas,
where, as the NEW YORK TIMES put it
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Gov. Greg Abbott has been “testing the legal limits of what a state
can do to enforce immigration law,” with things like
installing razor wire
[[link removed]] along
the banks of the Rio Grande, and physically barring border patrol
agents from responding to reports of migrants in distress—in one
case
[[link removed]],
two weeks ago, of a woman and two children who subsequently drowned.

The tone of much corporate news reporting, outside of gleefully
racist
[[link removed]] outlets
like FOX, is critical of Texas’ defiance of federal law, but
conveys an idea that, yes, there’s a crisis at the border, but this
isn’t the way to handle it.

But what if their definition of crisis
[[link removed]] employs
some of the same assumptions and frameworks that drive Abbott’s
actions? Precisely how big a leap is it from Biden’s promise
[[link removed]] that,
if he gets a deal for money to Ukraine, he would “shut down the
border right now and fix it quickly,” to razor wire in the Rio
Grande?

Defining a crisis shapes the ideas of appropriate response. So, is
there a crisis at the US Southern border, and for whom?

We’re joined now by Aron Thorn. He’s senior staff attorney at
the Beyond Borders
[[link removed]] program of
the Texas Civil Rights Project [[link removed]]. He
joins us now by phone from the Rio Grande Valley. Welcome
to COUNTERSPIN, Aron Thorn.

ARON THORN: Thank you.

JJ: I want to ask about US immigration policy broadly, but all eyes
are on Texas now for a reason. And from a distance, it just looks
wild. As an attorney, as a Texan, what are the legal stakes that you
see here? It feels a little bit like uncharted territory, even if it
has historical echoes, but how alarmed should we be, legally, about
what’s happening right now?

[Texas Tribune: What is Operation Lone Star? Gov. Greg Abbott’s
controversial border mission, explained.]

_TEXAS TRIBUNE (3/30/22
[[link removed]])_

AT: Yeah, I think that is the billion-dollar question for all of us
seeing this issue bubble up from the ground, frankly, as a slow boil
from a couple of years ago, when Governor Abbott began to establish
the Operation Lone Star
[[link removed]] program,
in which he spent billions of Texas taxpayer money to send troops, and
put a ton of resources into this state hardening of the US/Mexico
border.

We’ve seen an increasing, frankly, level of aggression of the state,
towards not only migrants, who are the ones who are caught in the
day-to-day violence of being caught up in the razor wire, being met
with officers, things like that. But the aggression from the state to
the federal government has increased intensely over the last year or
so. It is difficult to say that this constitutional crisis, between
what a state and the federal government can do, it’s hard to say
that that is overblown.

I would say that Texas is absolutely challenging the limits of
federalism, to see just how far it can go. And immigration is a
perfect vehicle for this kind of test. How far can I push the federal
government to act the way that I want the federal government to, on
things like immigration, on any other sort of federal issue where the
feds are the ones who are responsible under our system? How far can I
go?

Immigration is controversial. It’s very sensitive to a lot of folks.
A lot of folks do not know a lot about it, and so the images that come
out, as you mentioned, they seem chaotic, but this has ramifications
for something much beyond immigration.

So when I think of the constitutional crisis, I think about it in this
larger sense of, what does this really mean for federalism in this
country, right? If the federal government is not able to stand up and
assert its dominion over anything—immigration is just the hot topic
now—what does that say for the government of our country? And the
next time another state doesn’t like what the United States does on,
say, environmental regulations, or other things that are cross-border
or national, how far can that state take their agenda?

These are questions baked into our political system, they don’t have
any solid answers, and Texas is running into that gap to assert that
the state, at the end of the day, can assert itself over the federal
government when it wants to.

JJ: So it’s important to stay on top of, but for a lot of folks,
it’s just kind of a story in the paper. It’s about feds versus
states, and it’s kind of about red states and blue states, and I
think it’s a little bit abstract—but it’s _not_ abstract or
potential or theoretical. There are communities of human beings, as
you’ve pointed out, not just at the border, but elsewhere that are
being impacted. And I just wonder, how would you maybe have us
redefine the scope of impact, so that folks could understand that
we’re not talking about a few border communities?

[Texan: 'Come and Cut It': Texas Continues Setting Razor Wire Barrier
at Southern Border Despite Supreme Court Ruling]

_TEXAN (1/24/24
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AT: Yeah, absolutely. I think one angle of this story that we don’t
always see, it’s been heartbreaking to see, for example, the
state’s rhetoric of “come and cut it,”
[[link removed]] be
very aggressive, “we have a right to defend ourselves,” etc., etc.
The, in my opinion, overblown claims about just how many cartel
members are among people, just how many drugs they’re finding on
people, for example.

The very vast majority of folks who are showing up to the US/Mexico
border are folks who are in need of protection, they’re in need of
safety, they’re in need of stability. That is the very vast majority
of people.

And so something that does not often show up in these stories that is
particularly pertinent right now is, let’s be clear, Texas is
fighting for its right to lay concertina wire so that people can get
caught in it for hours, and get injured and languish there as
punishment for trying to seek safety.

And what they want to do is push people back into Mexico where they
are kidnapped, assaulted, raped, worse, as punishment for wanting to
seek safety. That is what Texas is asserting its right to do. That’s
what the Trump administration’s primary goal was on the US/Mexico
border. That’s what Greg Abbott’s primary goal is at the US/Mexico
border. And we don’t talk about that, as a country, of what that
actually looks like every day, what that looks like on the ground.

What we talk about are US communities, we talk about people “taking
our jobs,” we talk about the fentanyl
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coming in—all real issues that are not touched, not controlled, by
people who are desperate and are trying to seek safety. So to me, that
is one of the biggest holes that I always see in these stories, that
we don’t really take: our right to defend our border, but from what?

As a Texan, I don’t think what Texas is doing on the border
day-to-day will actually improve the lives of Texans. We are spending
billions of dollars of our own tax money for this political ploy that
we are improving the lives of Texans, while we are stripping Texans
off of Medicaid faster than any other state in the country. Texans are
very strapped in an economy where inflation is still an issue, and
nothing that we’re doing at our border is going to affect that.

So we don’t talk about where the rubber meets the road for basically
anybody in this story. It’s just simply in the political cacophony.

[ABC: Record Crossings Amid Texas Border Battle]

_ABC NEWS (12/19/23
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JJ: When you were on ABC NEWS
[[link removed]] in December,
talking about SB4, which you can talk about, the setup talked about a
“tidal wave” of people coming over the southern border—let’s
be clear, we’re talking about the _southern_ border, right—the
strain on US resources being “unprecedented,” and all of these
people were crossing the border “illegally.” And that was the
intro for you. And in media, generally, migration itself is sort of
pre-framed as a problem, as a crisis
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but we haven’t always seen it that way, and we don’t have to see
it that way, do we? We kind of need a paradigm shift, it seems like
here.

AT: I think you’re absolutely right, and one thing that I sometimes
will tell people is, take a step back and really think about it.
Migration is one of the most constant things in the entirety of human
existence. This is one of the most fundamentally human things that
someone can do. If you are suffering in one place for whatever reason,
X number of reasons, throughout literal human history, you migrate to
a place where you will do better.

[Aron Thorn]

_Aron Thorn: “We will continue down this really ugly road of, how
violent are we willing to get with people? That’s the question
we’re at in 2024.” (image: ABC NEWS
[[link removed]])_

Let’s not let the federal government get off the hook. The idea that
you can law-enforce your way out of human instinct and human behavior
is absurd, and it’s been very present in, obviously, Texas, but the
federal government’s policies on the US/Mexico border, for at least
30 years, since at least the early ’90s. This idea that there is
such a strain on resources, but yet we have a blank check for
enforcement-only policies, that if we are just a little more violent
and a little more aggressive towards people trying to come in to get
more stability in their lives, then we can prevent something that is a
fundamentally human behavior, is absurd.

And we need to have more of a discussion about why we’re sitting
here, 30 years later, and we’re at a point where if we lay a hundred
more yards of concertina wire, and we cut up a few more women and
children, they will stop coming. That is the argument we’re having
now, and it’s absurd.

So I absolutely agree that without this paradigm shift of: what are we
doing? we will continue down this really ugly road of, how violent are
we willing to get with people? That’s the question we’re at in
2024.

JJ: Yeah, I harbor hatred for corporate media for many reasons, but
one of them is this PBS NEWSHOUR, real politic for the smart people,
that I saw recently, which basically said
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calm down, Biden is just “seeking to disarm criticism of his
handling of migration at the border as immigration becomes an
increasing matter of concern to Americans in the lead up to the
presidential election.”

So we’re supposed to just think of it as part of a chess game, and I
guess ignore the actual human impact of what these moves are going to
be. But I just really resent this media coverage that says, “This is
just shadows on the cave wall; it’s really about the election, you
don’t really need to worry about it.” I just wonder what you would
like to see news media, well, I guess I’m saying do less of, but
what could they do more of that would move this issue forward in a
humane way?

[PBS NewsHour: Share on Facebook Share on Twitter President Biden says
he’ll shut the U.S.-Mexico border if given the ability. What does
that mean? Politics Jan 29, 2024 6:56 PM EST WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Joe Biden has made some strong claims over the past few days
about shutting down the U.S.-Mexico border as he tries to salvage a
border deal in Congress that would also unlock money for Ukraine. The
deal had been in the works for months and seemed to be nearing
completion in the Senate before it began to fall apart, largely
because Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump doesn’t
want it to happen. READ MORE: Biden says he would shut down
U.S.-Mexico border ‘right now’ if Congress sends him a deal “A
bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken
immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be
here, and Congress needs to get it done,” Biden said over the
weekend. “It’ll also give me as president, the emergency authority
to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that
bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix
it quickly.” A look at what Biden meant, and the political and
policy considerations at play: Where is Biden’s tough talk coming
from? Biden wants continued funding for Ukraine in the face of
Russia’s invasion. Senate Republicans had initially said they would
not consider more money for Kyiv unless it was combined with a deal to
manage the border. As the talks have progressed, Biden has come to
embrace efforts to reach a bipartisan border security deal after years
of gridlock on overhauling the immigration system. But his statement
that he would shut down the border “right now” if Congress passed
the proposed deal is more about politics than policy. He is seeking to
disarm criticism of his handling of migration at the border as
immigration becomes an increasing matter of concern to Americans in
the leadup to the presidential election. Would the border really shut
down under the deal? No. Trade would continue, people who are citizens
and legal residents could continue to go back and forth. Biden is
referencing an expulsion authority being negotiated by the lawmakers
that would automatically kick in on days when illegal border crossings
reached more than 5,000 over a five-day average across the Southern
border, which is currently seeing as many as 10,000 crossings per day.
The authority shuts down asylum screenings for those who cross
illegally. Migrants could still apply at ports of entry until
crossings dipped below 3,750 per day. But these are estimates, the
final tally hasn’t been ironed out. There’s also an effort to
change how asylum cases are processed. Right now, it takes several
years for a case to be resolved and in the meantime, many migrants are
released into the country to wait. Republicans see that as one reason
that additional migrants are motivated to come to the U.S. The goal
would be to shrink the resolution time to six months. It would also
raise the standards for which migrants can apply for asylum in the
first place. The standard right now is broad by design so that
potential asylum seekers aren’t left out, but critics argue the
system is being abused. Didn’t Trump also threaten to shut down the
border? Yes. Trump vowed to “shut down” the U.S-Mexico border
entirely — including to trade and traffic — in an effort to force
Mexico to do more to stem the flow of migrants. He didn’t follow
through, though. But the talk was heavily criticized by Democrats who
said it was draconian and xenophobic. The closest Trump came was
during the pandemic, when he used emergency authorities to severely
limit asylum. But trade and traffic still continued. WATCH: Trump
deploys racist tactics as Biden rematch appears likely The recent
echoes of the former president by Biden, who had long argued that
Trump’s border policies were inhumane, reflect the growing public
concern about illegal migration. But Biden’s stance threatens to
alienate progressives who already believe he has shifted too far right
on border policies. Does Biden already have authority to shut down the
border? House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally and critic of the
proposed deal, has argued that presidents already have enough
authority to stop illegal border crossings. Biden could, in theory,
strongly limit asylum claims and restrict crossings, but the effort
would be almost certainly be challenged in court and would be far more
likely to be blocked or curtailed dramatically without a congressional
law backing the new changes. “Congress needs to act,” White House
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “They must act. Speaker
Johnson and House Republicans should provide the administration with
the policy changes and funding needed.” What is the outlook for the
proposed deal? Prospects are dim. A core group of senators negotiating
the deal had hoped to release detailed text this week, but
conservatives already say the measures do not go far enough to limit
immigration. Johnson, R-La., on Friday sent a letter to colleagues
that aligns him with hardline conservatives determined to sink the
compromise. The speaker said the legislation would have been “dead
on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about it were true. As
top Senate negotiator, James Lankford, R-Okla, said on “Fox News
Sunday,” that after months of pushing on border security and
clamoring for a deal tied to Ukraine aid, “when we’re finally
getting to the end,” Republicans seem to be saying; “‘Oh, just
kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because of the
presidential election year.'” Trump is loath to give a win to Biden
on an issue that animated the Republican’s successful 2016 campaign
and that he wants to use as he seeks to return to the White House. He
said Saturday: “I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators
are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say,
that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please.” What happened to
Biden’s border efforts so far? Biden’s embrace of the
congressional framework points to how the administration’s efforts
to enact a broader immigration overhaul have been stymied. On his
first day in office, Biden sent a comprehensive immigration proposal
to Congress and signed more executive orders than Trump. Since then,
he has taken more than 500 executive actions, according to a tally by
the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. His administration’s
approach has been to pair new humanitarian pathways for migrants with
a crackdown at the border in an effort to discourage migrants from
making the dangerous journey to the U.S.-Mexico border on foot and
instead travel by plane with a sponsor. Some policies have been
successful, but the number of crossings has continued to rise. He’s
also sought to make the issue more regional, using his foreign policy
experience to broker agreements with other nations. Biden’s aides
and allies see the asylum changes as part of the crackdown effort and
that’s in part why they have been receptive to the proposals. But
they have resisted efforts to take away the president’s ability to
grant “humanitarian parole” — to allow migrants into the U.S.
for special cases during emergencies or global unrest. Associated
Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report. Left: U.S.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a visit to Dutch Creek
Farms in Northfield, Minnesota, U.S., November 1, 2023. Photo by Leah
Millis/Reuters Related Biden says he would shut down U.S.-Mexico
border ‘right now’ if Congress sends him a deal By Zeke Miller,
Colleen Long, Meg Kinnard, Associated Press Speaker Johnson warns
Senate’s bipartisan border deal will be ‘dead on arrival’ in
House By Stephen Groves, Associated Press ]

_PBS NEWSHOUR (1/29/24
[[link removed]])_

AT: Yeah, I mean, hearkening back to the last question about a
paradigm shift, I think as somebody who has done this work on the
ground for many years, started doing this in the middle of the Trump
administration, now has seen this through the Biden administration,
something that we often remark to each other on the ground is that so
much of the Biden administration’s policies have the exact same
effect as what the Trump administration was doing, just in a less
visceral way.

And so when that is raised to folks—he’s having the same exact
effect on the daily lives of migrants—people who would be outraged
and out in the streets to protest against Donald Trump, look at the
Biden administration having the exact same effect, saying, “Well,
he’s trying his best.”

So the idea that it still boils down to the politics of it all: “I
just don’t like this person who’s in office, and so anything that
he does, if he breathes wrong, I’m going to criticize him,” but
yet somebody who has the same effect… It really brings to bear how
many folks in this country, this is a theoretical issue for them. When
the rubber meets the road, we don’t have a great track record of
being truly empathetic and truly smart on migration. “It’s a
political football in the right hands, and so I’m going to just
agree with whatever the administration does, and I’m certainly not
going to critique him,” is not the way that we really get to actual
solutions on immigration in this country.

JJ: Are there any policies that are in the works, or about to be in
the works? Is there anything that folks can be pulling for, either in
Texas or nationally?

AT: That is also a really complicated answer. But one thing I will
say, I always raise for folks to think about the guest worker program
in this country, and it’s complicated to say in a soundbite type of
answer, because labor has its own issues, right? Labor is very
exploited in the United States, and so sometimes I don’t want to
have this discussion about bringing migrants here just to be exploited
by abusive employers, right? That’s not the answer.

However, it is true that economics is one of the biggest drivers of
migration trends over the last couple of centuries that we can see,
right? Bad economies in other parts of the world encourage people to
migrate to the US, and a bad economy in the US actually encourages
people to go home. The numbers are there.

And so that is actually true, that a lot of people are coming to seek
stability in their lives, or in the lives of people who are still at
home. And yet the United States has done everything in its power to
either gum up the works of its guest worker program—slashing visas,
making things more difficult for whatever reasons—and we are still
sitting here with the reality that a significant slice of people would
love to come to the United States, make money and go home.

To me, that seems like a no-brainer that both parties could get
behind, of “let’s confront that reality,” and if we do not want
to absorb these people into our society, let’s allow people to come
in, benefit us, benefit themselves, and then return.

There is a significant slice of people who would like to do that, and
we do have a guest worker visa program, but every year we make it more
difficult, or we don’t want to expand it. An expanded guest worker
program, I think, is a step in the right direction, if we don’t want
so many people showing up at the US/Mexico border saying, “OK, I
have no other viable options. Let me take the way that I need to to
protect myself and my family.”

[NYT: NYT Invents a Bipartisan Anti-Immigrant Consensus]

_FAIR.ORG (1/9/24
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JJ: Ari Paul wrote for FAIR.ORG
[[link removed]] recently
about how news media—he was writing about the NEW YORK TIMES
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but they weren’t alone—make this fake consensus. They had a
front-page piece that said, “Biden Faces Pressure on Immigration,
and Not Just From Republicans.” And it was the idea that even
Democratic mayors and leaders are agreeing: Too many South Americans
are trying to get into this land of milk and honey. And what that
reporting involves is manipulating statements of local officials who
are saying, “We want to welcome immigrants, but we don’t have the
resources,” and turning that into, “Nobody wants immigrants in
their community.”

And I guess my big beef, among others, with that is that media do us a
disservice, confusing people about what we believe and what we are
capable of and what we really think. And it just kind of breaks my
heart, because it tells people their neighbors think differently than
they do. It misleads us about public opinion about the welcoming of
immigrants.

And I guess I should have put a question on that, but I can’t think
of one, except to say that when communities say, “We need more
resources to address this,” that is not the same as them saying,
“Migrants out.”

AT: Having worked in immigration now for many years, immigration is
such a difficult topic, because underneath the banner of immigration
are so many other debates, about US society and culture and race,
class, our place in the world, right, foreign policy—the list goes
on and on and on. Immigration hits on so many of those realities.

And it hearkens back to, many other different types of groups of folks
can tell you about—people of color, for example—having white
colleagues who say prejudiced things until they know a person of
color, or they say xenophobic things until they know an immigrant.

And I think that this is so deeply challenging because people are
stepping to this without having any actual access, easy access, to
folks who have gone through this process, and specifically on class,
and also on the way that the United States government works, right? I
don’t know the exact figure, but DHS’s budget is colossal, and
Texas is spending billions of dollars with its own money.

And so everybody’s stepping to this debate of whether this person
should “have not broken the law.” But we have gotten to this place
by spending all of this money we could use welcoming people, putting
welcoming infrastructure in place, we’re using it on enforcement. No
wonder we don’t have any money to welcome people into our
communities, and that’s frustrating and hurtful to you. And then
also you’re stepping with all of these biases, because that’s a
real challenge we have in our society.

Yeah, no wonder, it’s very easy to point fingers at that person. It
is the culmination of all of these other real societal ills that we
grapple with every single day. No other issue hits on so many at the
same time.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Aron Thorn; he’s
senior staff attorney at the Beyond Borders program at the Texas Civil
Rights Project. Aron Thorn, thank you so much for joining us this week
on COUNTERSPIN.

AT: Yes, thank you.

_Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and producer/host of
FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes
frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra!, and co-edited The FAIR
Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview
Press)._

_Aron Thorn is senior staff attorney at the Beyond Borders
[[link removed]] program of
the Texas Civil Rights Project [[link removed]]._

_FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering
well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We
work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater
diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that
marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an
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defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive
group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to
break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent
public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of
information.  FAIR’S WORK IS SUSTAINED BY OUR GENEROUS
CONTRIBUTORS, WHO ALLOW US TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT. DONATE
[[link removed]] TODAY TO BE A PART OF THIS
IMPORTANT MISSION._

* Immigration
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* immigrant rights
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* texas
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* US-Mexico Border Wall
[[link removed]]

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