With their two children on their shoulders, Wilfredo Riera and Nataly Barrionuevo wade into the Rio Grande from the Mexican shore, the water soon reaching their waists.
Avoiding the string of large orange buoys placed by Texas authorities to block their passage, they slog on towards the United States.
From their starting point at Piedras Negras in Mexico’s Coahuila state, they cross to Eagle Pass in south Texas, where that state’s governor, Greg Abbott, has deployed the military in an effort to stem the migrant flow.
It is 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) on a Friday, with the heat index hovering above 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).
The US military vehicle that had been guarding the area earlier has left.
The buoys extend for nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters). They are designed to spin if someone tries to climb onto them, and have sharp, serrated metal disks on either side. The lifeless body of one person was found caught in the buoys in recent weeks.
Riera, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, crosses the river with his family and more than a dozen other migrants, far from the buoys.
They had been warned about the buoys, he said, but were told “there was a way around them.”
The crossing takes about 10 minutes. Then the group encounters a seemingly endless barrier of razor-wire fencing.
Finding a weak spot, they clamber over.
‘To give ourselves up’
“We want to give ourselves up,” Riera says. But there are no guards.
A hot wind blows. The only sound is the faint chirping of lizards in the riverside vegetation.
The group encounters another fence, 10 feet high. The migrants throw pieces of clothing atop its barbs so they can climb over.
Perched atop the fence, Barrionuevo, 39, waits for her husband to catch up along with Nicolas, seven, and two-year-old Yeiden.
The razor wire rips into their clothes — but now they are smiling, finally in the United States.
The family had left Ecuador six weeks earlier in search of a better life. The journey included a rugged passage through the notoriously hazardous Darien Gap in the mountains between Colombia and Panama.
But now a border police van has pulled up. An officer gets out and asks the group, in Spanish, to show their documents.
The men are searched. Then the group is placed in a van to be taken to a detention center.
There, officials will assess their asylum requests — either they will be allowed to enter the country until a judge hears their case, or else they will be deported.
“We want to work, to make a future for them,” Barrionuevo says, looking at her boys, her voice breaking.
‘War zone’
The migrant group had actually landed on private property — Heavenly Farms, where Hugo and Magali Urbina grow pecans.
The Urbinas’ riverside property is completely fenced off and guarded by the military.
They don’t like their situation, but have little choice in the matter, said Magali Urbina, 52.
“My husband and I do not believe in open borders,” she said. “But we also don’t believe that we should treat people inhumanely.
“We wish that the government, the federal government would do more so that this wouldn’t have to happen.”
But when someone does cross, she added, “You don’t say, ‘Wait a minute, you shouldn’t be here.’ That’s not our first human instinct.”
The US Justice Department has sued Texas seeking the removal of the buoys, saying they violate border treaties with Mexico and that the problem should be resolved through diplomacy.
A federal court is reviewing the case.
“Let me be clear,” Governor Abbott said Monday. “We are fully authorized by the Constitution of the United States of America to do exactly what we are doing. And that is to secure the border.”
Abbott, a Republican, blames the Biden administration for the country’s migrant problems.
Governors of several other conservative states have sent national guard troops to help along the border.
Abbott “put up a nice little stage area here to make it look like a war zone,” said Jessie Fuentes, 62, owner of Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team in Eagle Pass.
The increasing militarization of the border, he said, had brought his business to a standstill.
“Nobody wants to get in (the river) because of all this,” Fuentes said, pointing to a military vehicle nearby.
‘Not how we treat people’
Robie Flores, 36, grew up in Eagle Pass. She has fond memories of picnics in riverfront Shelby Park, where people would sometimes shout friendly greetings to people on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande, in Piedras Negras.
All that has changed.
Texas first erected a barrier of shipping containers that does little to protect anyone, said Flores, a videographer and co-founder of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, which opposes border walls.
After the containers came the fencing and then the buoys.
“This isn’t what our community is,” Flores said. “And this isn’t how we treat people… migrants being herded like cattle.”
Pointing to the wire fencing, she added, “it’s just not who we are.”
