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Texas officials are investigating claims by a state trooper that superiors ordered officers on the border to push migrants back into the Rio Grande and deny them water.
The trooper also said a pregnant migrant miscarried while entangled in razor wire, which has injured others, along the river, The Houston Chronicle reported.
"There is not a directive or policy that instructs Troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river," Travis Considine, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told the news outlet.
Migrants approach the site where workers are assembling large buoys used as a border barrier along the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas. A Texas state trooper said Troopers have been ordered to push migrants back into the Rio Grande and deny them water. (AP/Eric Gay)
He said the Office of the Inspector General, which investigates claims of misconduct by state employees, is investigating the trooper's allegations. Texas Fox News Digital has reached out to DPS, the OIG and Gov. Greg Abbott's office.
The trooper, who works as a medic, sent the July 3 email to a sergeant describing what he allegedly witnessed while on patrol in Eagle Pass — where Abbott recently ordered the deployment of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande to deter migrant crossings.
He said he was on patrol with other troopers at around 10 p.m. on June 25 when they came across a group of about 120 people, including small children and babies, who were "exhausted, hungry and tired" along a fence line on the Texas side of the southern border.
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"We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico," the email said. "We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. 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."
A few days later, troopers came across a 4-year-old girl attempting to cross the razor wire. She was pressed back by Texas National Guard soldiers because of orders given to them, the email said. The girl wound up passing out as temperatures reached more than 100 degrees, it said.
That same day, a man rescued his child who got stuck on a barrier in the water covered with razor wire. In the days after, several people were injured by the wire, the claims allege.
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On July 1, Border Patrol agents found a woman and her two children trying to cross the Rio Grande. A boat team found the woman and one child, who later died at a hospital. The body of the second child was never found.
Texas has stepped up its border security in recent weeks with the deployment of floating barriers along the Rio Grande. The move has ruffled feathers in Mexico, which has sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. government saying it may violate treaties on boundaries and water.
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