Hunting Humans in West Texas

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

It almost would not be a normal news day if the governors of Florida and Texas weren't out demonizing immigrants and egging-on racist violence.  Last week Florida's Ron DeSantis sent representatives to Texas who picked up a planeload of immigrants - because apparently Florida did not have enough of its own to fill a plane - and flew them to the social enclave and vacation destination of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, with phony promises of housing and jobs.  And this week Greg Abbott's non-stop hate-mongering in Texas has resulted it two indiscriminate shootings in Hudspeth County, out near the city of El Paso in extreme West Texas.

On Tuesday of this week a jail warden at the West Texas Detention Center, a privately owned prison in Sierra Blanca, Texas, and his brother were arrested and charged with manslaughter after they allegedly pulled up to a group of immigrants who were stopped along a roadside getting water.    The brothers opened fire on the group.  One male immigrant was killed in the shooting, and a female was seriously injured and is hospitalized.   The jail warden was reportedly fired as a result of the shooting.  He and his brother are being held in the El Paso County Jail without bond.

The following day a 26-year-old male resident of Texas was accused of shooting a male immigrant in the face.  That incident also occurred in Hudspeth County.  It is unknown at this time whether the two incidents were related other than both being attacks on immigrants.

Yesterday Gregg Abbott's Democratic challenger for governor, Beto O'Rourke, himself a resident of El Paso, laid blame for the shootings squarely at the feet of Governor Abbott.  In a tweet on the matter, O'Rourke said:

"This is the predictable result when Abbott describes asylum seekers as an "invasion," asks Texans to "defend" the state from immigrants by "taking matters into our own hands," and treats refugees like political props instead of human beings."

Immigration, it would seem, is a big part of Greg Abbott's re-election strategy, and he has convinced some Texans that they are the frontline of a holy war and must defend their homeland - and in Texas that means guns and bloodshed.

And Greg Abbott is fine with that.