Photo: Alamy
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott shared a new video of the massive 80-acre construction site that will soon be the home of the Forward Operating Base in Eagle Pass.
In a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter, Abbott wrote that the “base camp will house Texas National Guard soldiers deployed to respond to Biden’s border crisis.” He noted that the base would “provide our soldiers additional resources and regional support to secure the border.”
The announcement of the new base came in February amid multiple legal battles between the federal government and Texas over the handling of the crisis at the southern border. A statement released by Abbott’s office detailed the features and capacity of the new base.
The situation at the Texas-Mexico border escalated on March 21, when the New York Post released a video report of a large group of illegal migrants violently pushing past five guardsmen after ripping away the razor wire barriers to attempt to cross into the United States.
Texas arrested a large number of individuals and charged them with offenses related to the incident, according to the New York Post. Magistrate Judge Humberto Acosta presided over a bond hearing for 39 of the alleged offenders on Easter Sunday.
He said that the El Paso District Attorney’s Office had not scheduled the defendant’s detention hearings, adding, “It does not appear that these cases will be filed anytime soon, as they do not seem to be in the DA’s office.” He used that reasoning to release them “on their own recognizances.”
The illegal migrants were then handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and placed on a detainer. Over 200 illegal migrants involved in the incident are currently in ICE detention, but Texas wants to bring state charges against all of them.
During an April 2 press conference, El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks discussed the actions of the illegal migrants, stating, “I am concerned that if we don’t send a message that you can’t come to Gate 36 or any place in El Paso and perpetrate violence to get into the United States that we can stop them.”
Hicks also detailed the state’s riot charges from the incident and contradicted Judge Acosta’s claims about his office’s preparations for detention hearings. He said that Judge Acosta contacted him on March 29 to tell him that a significant number of bookings were underway and that a hearing would occur on Easter Sunday.
Hicks said that he requested the hearings be pushed into the following week so that staff would not be held up in court on the holiday. “I was very surprised Sunday when Judge Acosta asked my assistant District Attorney if he had the cases in our office,” said Hicks.
He pointed out that his office was “not ready to go to trial on these cases,” but was “prepared to go ahead on the bond hearings.”