Eagle Pass Border Coalition Fight Societal and Environmental Issues on the Border

EAGLE PASS, Texas — The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has taken over Shelby Park in Eagle Pass for Operation Loan Star since July of 2023. Meanwhile, he resides over 200 miles away, in the Austin Texas Governor’s Mansion, leaving the residents of Eagle Pass to deal with the ramifications of their community and park. 

“When they come here to Eagle Pass, they don’t even speak to the locals,” a member of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, Jessie Fuentes, said. “They chopper into their sequestered park, and they don’t speak with anyone. They don’t visit hospitals, they don’t visit schools; they don’t do anything. They just come and take pictures.”

Fuentes was a communications teacher at the local high school for 21 years. Two of his former students, Robie Flores and Alejandro Flores, founded the Eagle Pass Border Coalition in 2019 with the mission to combat everything that was happening in and around the border, such as walls and militarization. More recently, they have taken on the environmental issues and societal issues for the people and environment around the border, according to Fuentes. The group has an established board, officers and members. Fuentes anticipates the membership growing because of the current state of the border and the state immigration policies. 

Operation Lone Star is a border security initiative that was launched by Abbott in March 2021 in reaction to a rising number of border crossings. Currently, 15 states are supporting the operation with troops and funding. 

On Jan. 10, 2024, the Texas Military Department came in and closed down Shelby Park. The Eagle Pass Border Coalition has had concerns that Governor Abbott and Operation Lone Star are causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem of the Rio Grande and the surrounding Shelby Park. 

Abbott renewed a border security disaster declaration in April of 2024, according to Texas.gov. This gives the governor the power to deploy the Texas National Guard to the border in Eagle Pass and 53 other counties that are near or on the border, even if what they do there is extremely harmful to the environment. The buoys in the river near Shelby Park, which have been there since July 2023, are altering the flow of the river and have affected erosion patterns, according to Flores. Chemicals have been sprayed on vegetation surrounding the river, islands on the river have been bulldozed, de-vegetation has occurred because of the big machinery and the barriers affect the animals living in Shelby Park and the Rio Grande, according to Flores. 

“The governor is spending billions of dollars to destroy an ecosystem that has been around for thousands of years,” Fuentes said. 

The group has conducted protests, sent letters to the governor, and invited him to sit with them to hear their thoughts, but he has never responded to them.

Fuentes witnessed a progression of the state putting up concertina wire, armed guards, Humvees, shipping containers, cyclone fences and the building of concrete walls. Then, in June of 2023, he saw a bulldozer connecting the island to the mainland right by Shelby Park. This led him to file a lawsuit, with the help of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, against the state of Texas to stop the wall of buoys being put into the Rio Grande. 

By the time the lawsuit was filed into the system, the buoys were already in the water. So, they changed the lawsuit to an injunction to get them removed. They had trouble getting into a trial because it was pushed around to many different court systems. 

Around a month later, the Department of Justice, the federal authorities, filed a similar lawsuit. In conjunction, they teamed up and the Department of Justice took over. They then won the case, meaning the buoys had to be removed, but Governor Abbott appealed it to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This court decided that the buoys could stay in the river while the lawsuit goes through the process of the Judicial Court. The buoys have been there for close to a year now. 

“The fight is still there,” Fuentes said. “The fight is at the fifth circuit, but I have a feeling it is going to end up at the Supreme Court.” 

Amerika Garcia Grenwal is a member of both the Eagle Pass Border Coalition and the Border Vigil.

The Eagle Pass Border Vigil is another organization in Eagle Pass that exists separately but works together with the Eagle Pass Border Coalition. The Border Vigil was formed to recognize the lives lost at the border. They come together once a month to have prayers, sing songs, and throw flowers into the river to commemorate the lives that have been lost. 

Another member of the Border Vigil is Dan McCuistio, a master woodworker, who led a project with Grenwal to build 700 crosses, each representing a death on the border. 

“Well Amerika asked me to do it, but it made perfectly good sense to memorialize the immigrants that died just getting across the border,” McCuistio said. “So, these are people that drowned, or died in the desert of thirst, or they died in car wrecks being chased around by the border control. There is a number of ways they die because of a broken immigration system, so we mourn these people.” 

A white cross symbolizes an adult migrant who has died, a cross with a spot of pink or blue symbolizes a child who has died and a wood cross symbolizes members of the Texas National Guard who have died. 

The crosses were put up in Shelby Park near the north bridge in a big field. The memorial was up for a month before the crosses were ordered to be taken down on January 13, 2024, by the Texas Military Department. 

Today you can find 40 of the crosses placed in front of McCuistio’s property. 

---

This project was created through a journalism class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies Department. This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club.