Why a civil war could be brewing in the Texas border town of Eagle Pass

As the US struggles to stem the tide of illegal migrant arrivals, a bitter fight between state and federal authorities is unfolding in Texas with deadly consequences. Watch video.

On the banks of the Rio Grande, in a park known as the graveyard of the Confederacy, a new civil war could be brewing.

Federal Border Patrol agents have always managed the waterfront in Eagle Pass, a Texas town across the river from Mexico that is popular with migrants illegally entering the US.

That was until one night in January, when armed Texas military forces refused to let federal personnel into Shelby Park. They closed the gates and started erecting razor wire, fencing and shipping containers to seize control of the 4km stretch of the border.

Texas National Guard troops patrol shipping containers overlooking the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass’s Shelby Park. Picture: Sergio Flores

The drastic action, after thousands of migrants surged into Eagle Pass, responded to what Texas Governor Greg Abbott called an invasion. President Joe Biden failed to enforce US laws, he said, so he invoked Texas’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself”.

“We’ve had it. We’re not going to let this happen any more,” he thundered.

The irony of Abbott’s defiance is not lost on the residents of Eagle Pass.

In 1865, instead of surrendering to Union troops, Confederate leader General Joseph Shelby and his men planted their flag in the river and fled to Mexico. Now, 159 years after their last stand, the park named in his honour is the scene of the first salvo in a bitter new conflict.

A Texas surveillance truck used to monitor illegal migrant crossings in Eagle Pass. Picture: Sergio Flores

So far, despite Texas National Guard troops patrolling in Humvees, the battle is being fought strictly in the courts. The Biden administration has launched a series of legal challenges, not just for access to the border, but to remove buoys placed in the Rio Grande to deter migrants and to tear up a new law that makes it a state crime for migrants to illegally enter Texas.

Abbott’s Republican supporters are nevertheless beating the drums of war.

“The feds are staging a civil war,” Louisiana congressman Clay Higgins declared in January, “and Texas should stand their ground.”

Migration Policy Institute experts Muzaffar Chishti and Julia Gelatt say the saga is “raising fears of a looming constitutional crisis and hearkening back to Civil War-era questions over the division of federal and state authority on contentious policy issues”.

In Eagle Pass, however, locals just want their park back. The 19ha area is usually filled with community events and children’s sport, and includes a boat ramp to the river.

Jessie Fuentes planned to spend his retirement turning his lifelong passion for the Rio Grande into a canoe and kayak tour business, until state authorities locked him out. He now needs special permission to access the river, which is only granted for some of the hordes of journalists visiting to report on the crisis.

“If you get in the water and look to the right, Mexico looks beautiful. You look to the left, and damn, it’s ugly,” he says.

“They’re just putting on a show here at Shelby Park.”

Members of the Texas National Guard on the banks of the Rio Grande. Picture: Sergio Flores

State authorities say the militarisation of the Eagle Pass border is working. Migrant crossings have dramatically slowed this year, although a crackdown in Mexico has also had an impact.

Inside the park – where locals are banned except for a golf course that bizarrely remains open – Texas personnel show off military equipment including a surveillance system that can spot migrants up to 30km away. Drones fly overhead, boats patrol the river, and troops stand guard with rifles.

Caught in razor wire along the river bank are shoes, clothes and water bottles – signs of the migrants who have desperately still tried to find their way through the imposing barriers.

A boot sits tangled in razor wire in Shelby Park. Picture: Sergio Flores

Days after Texas took control of Shelby Park, a woman and two children drowned. In the war of words that followed, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar accused state personnel of preventing Border Patrol agents from attempting to rescue the migrants.

Standing in front of the Shelby Park fence, Eagle Pass Border Coalition activist Amerika Garcia Grewal says Abbott’s policy is “bloody murder”.

Amerika Garcia Grewal from the Eagle Pass Border Coalition. Picture: Sergio Flores

She argues it heightens the risk for migrants on the already treacherous journey to the US. In December, she helped erect 700 crosses in the park to remember those who died trying to cross the border last year. There were 43 who drowned in Eagle Pass, including babies.

“There are days it seems that the ambulance wails never stop,” local fire chief Manuel Mello told Congress.

Like Garcia Grewal and Fuentes, former mayor Jose Aranda believes Abbott is using Eagle Pass as “a great stage for the Republican statement about the border”.

Other governors have visited to defend Abbott’s right to “protect the sovereignty of our states and the nation”, as has former US president Donald Trump, who promises that if he is re-elected this year: “I won’t send Texas a restraining order, I will send them reinforcements.”

Donald Trump visiting Eagle Pass in February. Picture: Go Nakamura (Reuters)

The Biden administration has had some success fighting back. The Supreme Court decided Border Patrol agents could cut the razor wire on the river bank, although they are yet to try.

But the nation’s highest court also briefly allowed Texas’s migrant arrest law to go into effect last week, before an appeals court intervened. If it is enacted, it will spark an international standoff, with the Mexican government refusing to accept migrants deported by Texas.

Abbott is undeterred. He is spending $US10bn ($A15.2bn) on his statewide Operation Lone Star crackdown. In Eagle Pass, a new “forward operating base” will store military equipment and house at least 1800 troops, with 300 to move in next month.

Epi’s Canoe and Kayak Team owner Jesse Fuentes. Picture: Sergio Flores

“The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border,” the Texas Governor said last month, “because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”

Fuentes says the “authoritarian and racist” Abbott is using Eagle Pass as a “political pawn”.

“There’s been renegade governors before,” he says.

“I’m just waiting for someone to show up and say, hey, get your stuff out of here – you don’t belong here.”

Biden so far seems unwilling to chase Abbott out. While history may not repeat itself in Shelby Park, it certainly rhymes.

Originally published as Why a civil war could be brewing in the Texas border town of Eagle Pass