Texas probes treatment of migrants at border

The Texas inspector general is investigating a state trooper's claims that superiors ordered officers at the Mexico border to push migrants — including small children and women with nursing babies — back into the Rio Grande and deny them water.

Nicholas Wingate, a trooper-medic from the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS), expressed concern over "inhumane" actions toward migrants in a July 3 email to supervisors, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.

In the email, Wingate calls for several policy changes to prevent further injury to migrants, including removing barrels wrapped in razor wire in the river.

"The wire and barrels in the river need to be taken out as this is nothing but an inhumane trap in high water and low visibility," Wingate wrote.

He also told officials to reverse orders to withhold water from migrants.

"Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well," Wingate wrote, the Chronicle reported.

He added, "I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane."

The trooper also said that razor wire deployed by troopers has injured people, including a woman who had a miscarriage while entangled in the wire, according to the Chronicle.

Travis Considine, a DPS spokesman, said in an email that the Office of the Inspector General, which investigates claims of misconduct by state employees, "is investigating the allegations made in the email in question".

"There is not a directive or policy that instructs troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river," Considine said.

The Houston Chronicle reported that the trooper, who works as a medic, sent the email to a sergeant on July 3 detailing some of the things he witnessed while on patrol in Eagle Pass where Governor Greg Abbott recently ordered the deployment of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande to deter migrant crossings.

"I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God," the trooper wrote in the email, which the DPS gave to The Texas Tribune. "We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such."

The trooper said in the email that he was out on patrol around 10 pm on June 25 when he and other troopers came across a group of about 120 people, including small children and nursing babies, who were "exhausted, hungry and tired" along a fence line on the US side.

"We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do," the trooper said. "With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning. We made contact with command again and expressed our concerns and we were given the order to tell them to go to Mexico."

The trooper wrote in the email that five days later, a 4-year-old girl who attempted to cross the razor wire "was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers due to the orders given to them". The temperature "was well over 100 degrees", and the girl passed out, the email said, adding that she had received medical treatment.

That same day, a man rescued his child who got stuck on a barrel in the water covered with razor wire, according to the trooper's email. During the rescue, the man got a "significant" cut on his left leg, the trooper wrote. A 15-year-old boy also broke his leg trying to walk around the wire in the river and his father had to carry him across to the US side, the trooper wrote.

Later that night, troopers found a 19-year-old woman stuck in the razor wire having a miscarriage, the trooper's email said.

On the afternoon of July 1, the Border Patrol reported that a mother and her two children were struggling to cross the river, the email said. A DPS boat team found the mother and one child, who later died at the hospital. The body of the second child "was never found", the trooper wrote.