Eagle Pass reverses course, drops private property designation DPS wanted for public park

After hearing emotional testimony followed by a late-night, closed-door meeting, the Eagle Pass City Council on Tuesday rescinded the controversial order that declared a public park was private property so that migrants could be jailed for trespassing.

Mayor Rolando Salinas, who in June declared the park private at the behest of the Texas Department of Public Safety, reversed course and joined the four council members in the unanimous vote. He told the council and people in the audience the city had been caught in a whipsaw between the state and federal governments.

"I reiterate, this should not be our decision to make," Salinas said of the decision to effectively shutter the city's riverside park that separates its downtown from Mexico.

"The federal government, Congress, need to get together and make sure (they enact) immigration reform — the thing that everybody says 1 million times they (want but) that never happens."

Eagle Pass for the past month has become Ground Zero in the long-running immigration battle between Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Democratic Biden administration that has boiled over and now is the subject of a federal lawsuit against the state.

The lawsuit centers on Abbott's decision in early July to place a 1,000-foot string of oversized buoys in the middle of the international river near Eagle Pass without seeking authorization from federal authorities.

The move has angered the Mexican government and its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It has also drawn scores of reporters and photojournalists to Eagle Pass, where they have highlighted not only the buoys but also the miles of coiled razor wire installed as part of Abbott's Operation Lone Star along the Rio Grande.

News reports have noted that the wire has lacerated numerous migrants who have required emergency medical attention to stitch up wounds.

More: Along Texas' floating border barrier, migrant children left bloody by razor wire

Tuesday's vote by the Eagle Pass council came after a protest on the steps of city hall where speakers urged the elected body to restore the 47-acre Shelby Park to public status. Many of the protesters then went inside to bring their concerns directly to Salinas and the council members.

Several said the attention that has come to the city of about 28,000, that lies 145 miles west of San Antonio, paints the people of Eagle Pass as unfriendly and unwelcoming.

"The way we're being represented in our own community by outsiders just boils my temperature," said Jessie Fuentes, whose kayaking company cannot operate on the river in the face of the heavy law enforcement presence in the park, "You are our elected representatives. You need to stand with us, not against us."

More: How the buoys and other parts of Operation Lone Star affect life in Eagle Pass

Fuentes has filed a lawsuit against Abbott over the installation of the buoys and what he has called the "militarization" of Shelby Park. His sentiment was echoed by Eagle Pass resident Amerika Garcia Grewal.

"It's making us feel ashamed of ourselves," she told the council.

Not everyone in the council chambers opposed the state's actions at the park. Without the visible presence of DPS troopers and National Guard soldiers, the already high number of unauthorized border crossings in the Eagle Pass sector would climb even higher, said Victor Escalon, the South Texas director for DPS.

"Our concern is today it's 1,000 (unlawful crossings)," he said. "Tomorrow, it's 4,000, 5,000 and so on and so forth. We have a crisis here in the community. So we want to avoid that. And the way to avoid that is by our presence."

Maverick County Attorney Jaime "AJ" Iracheta, whose office prosecutes the migrants arrested on criminal trespass charges, acknowledged the concerns about migrants being injured once they reach the physical obstacles placed along the river. But, he added, Eagle Pass residents are also endangered by unchecked immigration.

"This is a humanitarian crisis, I agree 100%," he said. "But it also is a crisis for our community. It's a crisis for our citizens that have their houses broken into and are hiding in the closet and calling for help. It's our crisis for our ranchers that have their fences damaged every day."

Kristin Etter, an attorney for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who represents several of the migrants arrested at the park, said that since the Fourth of July weekend, more than 500 arrests have been made in Shelby Park.

The migrants waiting for their cases to be heard in court are being held in three state prison units that have been converted into detention centers as part of Operation Lone Star.

Getting the cases through the court system has been problematic on a number of fronts, said Etter, who did not attend the council meeting in Eagle Pass. At a hearing held remotely online Monday, two of Etter's clients were unable to even be sworn in because they speak neither English nor Spanish and were not responding to the interpreter's questions.

"Well, this is an impossible situation," said U.S. District Judge Susan Reed, who presided over the remote proceedings. She then postponed the hearing for one week.

The detainees, dressed in orange jumpsuits, joined the remote hearing from a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison unit in Edinburg, about 270 miles southeast of Eagle Pass.

Etter told the judge that her office was having difficulty obtaining the paperwork that DPS is required to provide that spells out the facts of the how the migrants came to be charged. Etter informed Reed she intended to subpoena the troopers involved so that she would know how to mount a defense for her clients.

Reed's response showed little sympathy for Etter.

"You go ahead and issue all the little subpoenas you want to issue," the judge told the attorney. "What I'm telling you is if you get the information, I expect that subpoena to be canceled."

Salinas, just before the council took its vote, said Eagle Pass and other border communities need more help from Washington.

"I also wish we had some more backing from our administration, the federal government," he said. "I wish the president would be a little more vocal on this issue and help us out. I feel that we're abandoned here."

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Eagle Pass council rescinds mayor's order to make public park private