Biden Administration, Media Caught Lying After Blaming Recent Border Drownings On Texas

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This is not the first time the administration tried to scapegoat boots on
the ground at the border for a crisis Biden’s policies caused.

President Joe Biden’s White House and the corporate media want you to
believe that Texas is responsible for the death of three migrants who
drowned in the Rio Grande, but Lone Star State law enforcement was not
even informed of the river deaths until an hour after they happened.

Under Biden, hundreds of illegal border crosser migrants have died, many
drowning, trying to force their way into the U.S. These tragedies were
long ignored by the corporate media. Since the beginning of Biden’s
record-breaking border crisis, the propaganda press have done nothing but
ignore and downplay the role Democrats’ open border policies play in
leaving migrants vulnerable to human trafficking and smuggling, feuding
Mexican cartels, fatal drug exposure, raging rivers, extreme temperatures
and terrain, and more.

It was not until the recent drownings of a migrant mother and two children
that press outlets took an interest in assigning blame for the raging
humanitarian crisis on our Southern border. PBS, CBS, the Associated
Press, The Daily Mail, NBC News, The Guardian, and others charged the
Texas National Guard with “blocking” federal border agents from saving the
illegal border crossers.

The bold accusation can be traced back to the media’s allies in Biden’s
Department of Homeland Security, which claimed in a cease-and-desist
letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Sunday that “Texas has
demonstrated that even in the most exigent circumstances, it will not
allow Border Patrol access to the border to conduct law enforcement and
emergency response activities.”

“On January 12, 2024, upon learning from Grupo Beta, a group affiliated
with the National Institute of Migration of Mexico, that a group of
migrants was attempting to cross the river, Border Patrol contacted Texas
officials and requested access to the border. Texas refused. Later, a
rescue team from Mexico was able to rescue two individuals from the group,
both with signs of hypothermia. Three individuals drowned,” the letter
states.

The White House similarly released a statement claiming “Texas officials
blocked U.S. Border Patrol from attempting to provide emergency
assistance.”

The drowning story seemed to conveniently pad the federal government’s
Supreme Court case, pointing the finger at Texas for allegedly illegally
inhibiting Border Patrol’s access to the Rio Grande. It also appears to
justify DHS’s threats that it will take action against the Lone Star State
for daring to interfere on the border.

In a complaint filed on Friday, the Biden administration specifically
claimed Texas’ seizure of a high-traffic illegal border crossing area in
Eagle Pass would keep Border Patrol from rendering aid to migrants in
danger.

A second supplemental memorandum filed to the Supreme Court by Biden’s
Department of Justice, however, shows a different drowning timeline than
what the White House press room reported or front pages of newspapers
suggested.

In the Monday filing, U.S Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar clarified
that the Texas National Guardsmen securing the Eagle Pass area were among
the last agents to be informed about the drownings.

Mexican officials, the document claims, were the first to notify Border
Patrol agents of the drownings, which occurred at 8 p.m. At the same time,
they warned that two more migrants were “in distress on the U.S. side of
the river in the area near the Shelby Park boat ramp” at 9 p.m.

From there, an “Acting Supervisory Border Patrol Agent went to the Shelby
Park entrance gate and informed the guardsmen from the Texas National
Guard stationed there of the drowned migrants and the migrants in
distress.”

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“The DOJ now confirms, those migrants had been deceased for an hour before
Texas was even alerted about it,” Fox News National Correspondent Bill
Melugin noted.

DHS’s initial insinuation that the Texas National Guard would deliberately
prevent federal agents from saving lives is not only factually wrong, it’s
ridiculous. In 2022, the Lone Star State’s component of the armed forces
tragically lost one of their own platoon after he tried to rescue illegal
border crossers from the raging waters between Mexico and Texas.

This is not the first time the Biden administration tried to make the
boots on the ground at the border the scapegoat for a crisis its open
border policies caused.

Nearly one year after corporate media and Democrat conspiracy theorists
spread lies that Border Patrol agents whipped migrants in 2021, a U.S.
Customs and Border Protection investigation in 2022 found no evidence that
the horseback unit used their reins to strike the influx of Haitians
illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Emails uncovered in late 2022 showed that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
knew the whipping story was a lie as early as September 2021, but he did
nothing but double down after initially denying the whipping claims.

By the time the White House, Democrats, and the corporate media
manufactured enough outrage to stir up anger at border agents, Mayorkas
was caught publicly claiming several times that he was “horrified by what
I saw.”

“One cannot weaponize a horse to aggressively attack a child that is
unacceptable. That is not what our policies and our training require. …
Let me be quite clear: That is not acceptable,” Mayorkas said in September
2021.

Texas’ Eagle Pass occupation may be just another round of border security
theater from Gov. Greg Abbott, but there’s no denying that true
malfeasance lies with the Biden administration which has not only
neglected the record-breaking national security crisis down south but also
lies to cover it up.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/17/biden-administration-media-caught-
lying-after-blaming-recent-border-drownings-on-texas/