December 18, 2021

Texas Is Just Going to Build Its Own Border Wall Now

Biden has kept Trump’s wall intact. But the Republican solution is always to demand more.

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On Friday, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the state had begun construction on its own fence along the US–Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. “Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job,” he tweeted. It was an attempt to counter the so-called “open border policies” of the Biden administration. On Saturday, he’ll visit the site firsthand with dignitaries including state land commissioner George P. Bush.

Abbott has been building up to this moment for a while. Previous stunts have included installing shipping containers in a wall-like fashion along the river; putting up chain-link fencing; and parking lots of state vehicles next to each other in a vaguely wall-like manner. He’s deployed the national guard to the border—this week the National Butterfly Center posted footage of men in fatigues trespassing with guns in their nature preserve:

On one level, Abbott is preparing to spend enormous sums of money on a project that is unlikely to have much of an impact on the flow of international migration, seemingly just to be able to tell voters and television viewers that he did it. But it’s a particularly striking development given the actual state of construction projects on the southern border today.

Although President Joe Biden, as a candidate, promised that he would not add any more fencing to the border, his administration has continued to take land for border-security infrastructure. And in South Texas, activists and landowners have pointed out that Biden-era upgrades to levees along the Rio Grande look indistinguishable from Trump-era fencing. (And Obama- and Bush-era construction before it.) Nor has Biden taken down any of the existing fencing, leaving intact the ecosystem-destroying barriers; last week, a Mexican gray wolf named Mr. Goodbar walked for 23 miles along the fence in New Mexico looking for an opening, before giving up and turning back. 

Throwing money at destructive projects in the name of border security is one of the most bipartisan maneuvers in American politics. But it doesn’t really make a difference to Republican politicians that we’re still living in the same old status quo; the rejoinder, as Abbott shows now, will always be to simply demand more.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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