The Mexican government said it recently recovered two bodies from the Rio Grande, claiming one was found stuck on the buoys Texas installed on the river to deter unlawful migration.
In a press release, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “[T]he Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) notified the Mexican Consulate in Eagle Pass that at about 2:35 p.m. they found a lifeless body caught in the southern part of the buoys that were installed in the Rio Grande River.”
The ministry noted that the cause of death and the individual’s nationality were unknown.
“We reiterate the position of the Government of Mexico that the placement of chained buoys by Texas authorities is a violation of our sovereignty,” the ministry said. “We express our concern about the impact on the human rights and personal safety of migrants of these state policies, which run counter to the close collaboration between our country and the United States federal government.”
Shortly afterward, the ministry released a second statement. Per Google Translate, the statement reads:
“In a separate event from the discovery of a body in the area of the buoys placed by the Texas Government in the bed of the Rio Grande, this Wednesday a second body was found upstream.”
The ministry said that the two bodies were discovered roughly three miles away from each other.
Border security experts alleged that the deceased person recovered by the buoys likely drowned further upstream before getting caught in the deterrent measures.
Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, claimed, “Two knowledgeable sources tell me this person drowned well upriver from the marine barrier and floated down to it.”
Others claimed Gov. Greg Abbott was responsible for the deaths of people attempting to cross into the United States unlawfully.
Sawyer Hackett, a Democrat strategist, claimed, “Two people have been found dead in the razor wire buoys installed by Greg Abbott. Abbott knew these buoys were death traps and were blatantly illegal — yet he installed them anyway at the taxpayers’ expense. This is blood on his hands.”
The Mexican government, however, only said that one of the bodies was found on the buoys, noting that the cause of death was unknown.
In a statement from Abbott’s office, a spokesperson said, “The Mexican government is flat-out wrong. To be clear, preliminary information points to the drowning occurring before the body was even near the barriers.”
“The Texas Department of Public Safety previously reported to Border Patrol the dead body floating upstream from the barriers in the Rio Grande. Also, DPS monitors the barriers for anyone attempting to cross and has not observed anyone attempting to cross since they were installed,” the governor’s office added.
The spokesperson noted that drowning deaths in the Rio Grande are “all too common,” blaming the deaths on the “open border policies of President Biden and President López Obrador.”
“If President Biden and President López Obrador truly cared about human life, they would do their jobs and secure the border,” the spokesperson concluded. “To be clear, even the Mexican government acknowledged that the second body was found miles upstream from the marine barriers.”
The discoveries come at a time of heightened domestic tension over border security issues and mass unlawful migration. The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden has sued Texas over the buoys, claiming that they violate federal law, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Gov. Abbott promised to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court, saying recently, “I believe that the constitutional right of the state of Texas to secure our border and to defend our sovereignty supersedes any statute.”