Abolish the Texas Rangers
Under the false pretense of a migrant “invasion,” the Trump administration has waged asymmetrical warfare on America’s immigrants, yielding shocking and depressing results. Just to name a few: since Trump’s inauguration the United States has functionally disappeared scores of permanent residents, including rendition to CECOT, a Salvadoran concentration camp; detained individuals at Guantánamo, America’s most infamous torture center; and deported multiple U.S. citizens, including several children. And just like its federal counterpart, Texas is sending masses of law enforcement officers to surveil, profile, and collectively punish thousands on the basis of their putative national origin. But long before President Trump proclaimed that “hordes” of migrants were “invading” the United States, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared that they had invaded the Lone Star State first. Abbott has been at this a while: in 2021, he declared “illegal migration” an official disaster in 34 Texas counties. To deter those seeking refuge, Texas laid miles of barbed wire, placed razored buoys, and deployed gunboats in the Rio Grande to booby-trap the riverine border with Mexico.