That 15K-member caravan that a few days ago looked to be steamrolling through Mexico with the help of the Mexican federales has run into a roadblock consisting of one wheelchair-bound U.S. politician, the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.
According to Todd Bensman of CIS.org, all Governor Abbott had to do to stop the massive juggernaut headed his way was to remind Miguel Angel Solis, governor of the neighboring Mexican state of Coahuila, of an agreement the two signed back in April. That agreement rescinded Abbott’s policy of enhanced safety inspections of trucks entering Texas–a major blow to the Mexican state’s economy–on the condition that Coahuila do its part in impeding migrants’ travel to the border.
In response to the reminder, Solis instituted Operativo Espejo (Operation Mirror), which involves, in Bensman’s words:
Mexican state police are blocking northbound commercial buses at the bus station in the Coahuila state capital of Saltillo, and at many other stations, and emptying migrants from trucks and vans at checkpoints on all roads leading into that state’s border cities. . . .
These latest events began when, as reported here last week, the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in a surprise move agreed to furnish the migrants with travel visas good for 30 days, enough time to reach the U.S. border. To the migrants’ dismay, however, once in Coahuila, they learned that that state refused to recognize the visas, contending that they allow travel anywhere in Mexico except the northern border. Following suit, the Mexican federal government began to adopt the same position, leaving the migrants in a pickle, with no authorization to travel further or even to remain in Mexico. The INM has committed to providing two flights per week to deliver the stranded migrants back to their homeland (most are Venezuelans).
This of course does not sit well with the migrants, and civil disobedience disturbances have broken out in Saltillo and elsewhere. On Tuesday the international bridge between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras had to be closed when a few dozen migrants temporarily forced their way across.
Bensman, in a CIS article posted in April, declared that, apparently for the first time, “an American state has successfully usurped federal responsibility for national diplomacy by enacting its own punitive measures that forced a sovereign country . . . to comply with its wishes on a national issue.”
Hat’s off to Governor Abbott, who took a stand and refused to back down.
For more, see CIS.org.