what kind of fucked-up monster puts razor-wire booby traps in a river

as always, cruelty is the point

this is just fucking horrifying.

a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain.

in the latest of far too many episodes of “cruelty is the point,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered his private army of border goons to string razor wire along and under the surface of the Rio Grande, to prevent migrants in seeking legal asylum from entering the United States.

holy shit, razor wire. much of it submerged under water.

this is fucked up on so many levels.

and the horror stories just keep coming, one after another.

Amid scorching heat and treacherous conditions, officers at the border assigned to Texas' Operation Lone Star have been told to push back exhausted and hungry groups of people, some of whom have been injured, including small children, nursing infants and even a pregnant and miscarrying young woman, according to an email from a DPS trooper/medic blowing the whistle on conditions they have seen.

got that? they’re pushing small children back into the water.

excuse me, but this is batshit insane.

it’s also inhumane. it’s so inhumane that a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper blew the whistle in a letter to the Houston Chronicle.

and it’s also illegal as fuck. Greg Abbott and his border goons are in violation of the Rivers and Harbors Act, which bars the installation of barriers in waterways without first obtaining federal authorization.

the DOJ sent Abbott a letter asking him nicely to please remove his booby traps.

Abbot declined. why? because fuck you, that’s why.

and so yesterday, the DOJ filed suit in federal court.

early indications are that Abbott will ignore the suit. again, because fuck you, that’s why.

so now we have a court battle on our hands.

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the so-called “border crisis” is a political fiction ginned up by Fox News and cynical Republicans in order to keep the rubes distracted and terrified.

fentanyl seizures at the border have increased. you’ll hear math-challenged Republicans trying to make political hay about this, but what it actually means is that the Biden Adminstration is doing a better job of drug interdiction than Trump did.

and for months, the screech-monkeys howled that the end of covid-era Title 42 restrictions on immigration would lead to vast hordes of drug-addled criminals streaming across our border. the predicted chaos and flood of immigrants never materialized.

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the migrants crossing our border are human beings. some of them have walked a thousand miles or more to escape crime and violence in politically-unstable countries — countries that all too often the United States has made unstable through its policies.

and when the migrants finally cross our border in search of the legal asylum they have every right to ask for, they are abused, maltreated, lied to, and herded on to buses and planes bound for who the fuck even cares, just get them the fuck out of our sight.

and now Greg Abbott is trying to maim them or worse, before they even make it to our shores.

at the very least, we owe these people basic human decency, and they’re not getting it.

because fuck you, that’s why.

cruelty, as always, is the point.