Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday once again criticized the Biden administration for not protecting the U.S.-Mexico border during the governor’s visit here earlier in the day.
“Our (president’s) administration not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. That was the main message by the governor, and that it took action by the state to close the border down in this area. That was the main message,” Owens told the 830 Times Tuesday afternoon following the governor’s visit.
Owens said he “has been thoroughly impressed with the reaction by our state and by our federal government” to the area’s ongoing immigration situation.
Though numbers of immigrants entering the country rose sharply almost immediately after President Joe Biden took office in January, the situation reached a flashpoint in Del Rio over the past week when thousands and thousands of immigrants began pouring over the Rio Grande near the city’s international bridge.
Owens said he and other local officials have been warning state and federal elected leaders about the problem for months.
“I’m thoroughly depressed because we knew this was coming. We all knew this was coming. For the last couple of months we’ve heard reports of 20,000, 25,000, caravans of over 25,000, and we knew it was coming.
“At the end of the day, I, as the county judge, need to be a little bit careful, at least over the next week or week-and-a-half and not throw everybody under the bus, those who I believe was absolutely at fault for this, for the simple reason that we need to get these people out from under the damn bridge,” Owens said.
Owens said he meets with state and federal officials every morning and said he was told today that the number of migrants is decreasing.
“The comment that we’ve heard, our ‘high water mark,’ was probably over 16,000 people. You had 12,155 on one day last week, and they removed 1,800 that day, and the next morning, the number was back up to 14,800, so everything that we put out and that everyone else was putting out was that you needed not to slow the flow, but to stop the flow because at the rate they were coming, you couldn’t get them out fast enough,” Owens said.
The jump from a few thousand immigrants under the bridge to more than 14,000 later in the week was one of the main reasons behind the closure of the bridge, Owens added.
“There was legitimate concern for the security of the international bridge. All these people, if they want to go somewhere, how would you stop them?” he said.
As of Tuesday morning, there were 8,600 persons still in the immigrant encampment, Owens said, and on Tuesday afternoon, that number had gone down slightly, to just over 8,000.
Owens said buses and aircraft are moving the migrants out of Del Rio.
Asked if migrants were still crossing the river to the encampment, Owens said, “Migrants are still coming across, but not at the little dam, where they were coming across before. Now they’ve moved downriver.”
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
