Troopers at the southern border under Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star scheme have allegedly “been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat,” Houston Chronicle reported. In one horrific incident detailed in the report, troopers pushed a four-year-old girl back into Mexico amid the searing heat hitting the region. The child subsequently “passed out from exhaustion.” Texas has also installed a deadly system of buoys and razor wiring that increases the likelihood of drowning.
Some troops reportedly expressed concerns about the orders to their superiors, showing more humanity, decency and understanding of what it means to be an American than Texas’ governor. We also need to hear from former Rep. Mayra Flores, who has announced that she’s again running for Texas’ 34th Congressional District. Voters deserve straight answers.
Flores previously welcomed an endorsement from third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik, who has played a pivotal role in amplifying dangerous attacks against migrants. Flores also previously echoed the same racist conspiracy theories as the racist mass murderer who attacked El Paso in 2019 and Buffalo last year. She also accepted thousands of dollars from Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), who has peddled white nationalist lies and claimed that “they [Democrats] want to change America, they want to replace the American electorate with third-world immigrants.”
Here are three questions former Rep. Mayra Flores must answer:
- Does Flores support the draconian practice of pushing children into a deadly river? And if not, what would she concretely do about it if elected?
- Will Flores denounce the extremism in her party, and if elected actually work towards solutions to reform our broken and out-of-date immigration system? Or will she continue to espouse white nationalist talking points?
- Will Flores commit to calling out her fellow Republican members when they employ dehumanizing white nationalist rhetoric about migrants?
As we’ve previously noted, we’re now seeing the consequences of dehumanizing rhetoric play out, where even babies and children are treated as less than human. Will Flores challenge her state’s leadership as she again runs to represent this border district, or be complicit in the abuses of some of the most vulnerable arriving to our border in search of asylum?
