Texas Should Revitalize, not Militarize Border Communities: A Q&A with Amerika Garcia Grewal

Eagle Pass resident, Garcia Grewal, talks about the reopening of Shelby Park and the impacts of Texas' new military base. And the creation of her new border-wide organization, Frontera Federation.

Amerika Garcia Grewal at Shelby Park before the Texas government closed the park. (Photo courtesy of Amerika Garcia Grewal)

Eagle Pass, Texas, is normally a quiet town of about 30,000 inhabitants that borders Piedras Negras, its sister city in Mexico. The town is home to Shelby Park, which lines the Rio Grande. In 2022 and 2023 the park received thousands of asylum seekers, some of whom drowned tragically while trying to cross the river. At the same time, hundreds of Republican elected officials, MAGA political candidates, Donald Trump, and even billionaire Elon Musk arrived at Shelby Park for photo ops and “border chaos” tours.

In January 2024, Governor Greg Abbott instructed National Guard soldiers to seal off Shelby Park. He also instructed them to prohibit Border Patrol, which is a federal agency, from entering the area, as he escalated his political rhetoric against the Biden administration.

This month, the National Guard reopened the park’s main entrance, though there is still a military presence in the park, and the boat ramp is still sealed, blocking access to the river. Eagle Pass resident, Amerika Garcia Grewal, has been outspoken about the militarization of her community and the thousands of unnecessary deaths of people trying to seek protection in the United States. She recently cofounded a new border-wide advocacy organization called Frontera Federation. Now that Texas has taken over and militarized the town’s community park and built a military base that can hold up to 2,300 soldiers, The Border Chronicle spoke with Garcia Grewal about the local impacts of these policies.

The Texas Military Department guards the entrance to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass in January 2024. (Photo credit: Jesse Herrera, courtesy of Border Vigil)

In January 2024, Governor Greg Abbott had the Texas National Guard close access to Shelby Park. Why did he do that? The National Guard reopened access this month. What is happening at the park now?

In late December of 2023 we started having large numbers of people arriving. Former Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Mexico on December 27 and met with the Mexican government. Almost overnight, the number of people crossing through Maverick County and Shelby Park dropped.

We went to take aid to one of the shelters in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and we encountered the National Guard, the army, a Mexican SWAT team, the state police, and the local Piedras Negras police. They were patrolling the riverfront, patrolling the town, and anybody who was picked up was then sent to the south of Mexico. It was so strict that we had a friend who’d gone to see her family over Christmas, and coming back, she had to prove that she lived in Piedras Negras in order to get onto a bus and come back to Piedras Negras.

On January 3, 2024, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and 60 other Republicans traveled to Eagle Pass. They put on their khaki shirts and boots and were walking up and down the park like, “Where is everybody?” And probably thinking, “Why did we travel so many hours to get here when there’s nobody here?”

A week later, the state of Texas invaded, kicked Customs and Border Patrol out of Shelby Park, and the governor said, “No one’s crossing because we’re here.”

But, of course, those of us who cross the border and go into Mexico could see differently. No one’s there because of a checkpoint 50 kilometers south of Piedras Negras. Nobody’s coming because of Mexican law enforcement at the bus stations and Mexican National Guard patrolling the riverbanks. Unfortunately, much of our media in the United States doesn’t report in Mexico, and they weren’t able to see that. And if they didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. So the narrative from the bully pulpit of the governor became the dominant narrative.

When the governor reopened the park, they didn’t tell the community. A lot of the military equipment and shipping containers are still there. At least they took the concertina wire off of Main Street, the part that was most visible to the outside community. And we can use the parking lot directly below the bridge, which is the free parking to shop downtown or walk into Mexico. So we do have some amenities back, but we have zero access to the boat ramp and waterfront, which is still fenced off, so there’s no fishing, canoeing, or kayaking.

What effect has all the military presence, visiting elected officials, and constant narrative about your community being in crisis had on you and other residents in Eagle Pass?

It hasn’t been good. We have fewer primary care and specialty care providers per capita than we should. What I’ve heard is that physicians will come to Eagle Pass. They like what they’re seeing, and they’re ready to sign up, and then their partner comes down, looks around and asks, “Why don’t you have a swim team at your school? Why don’t you have choir at your school?” Our community centers closed during the pandemic, and the money went to law enforcement. So we have very limited after-school programs. Plus, they see all of the soldiers and police and think, “Well, it must be dangerous here.” Even though it’s actually very safe. So that’s been a challenge for our community.

Also, in 2021, when Operation Lone Star started, it was a gold mine for the hotels and restaurants in Eagle Pass, because they were filled with soldiers and state police who have to eat three times a day. But in 2024, Texas gave a no-bid contract to Team Housing Solutions to build a military base south of Eagle Pass. The state of Texas pays $14 million a month for the use of those facilities and for the provision of services like meals and rooms. So the money that was going to the mom-and-pop restaurants and family-owned hotels is now going to a private corporation.

What kind of impact is the military base having on the community?

One of the things that I asked City Council and the military for was their public health plan. If you look at military bases across the United States, they usually have a community liaison officer, someone who goes and says, you know, we have this many kids at the elementary school and this many kids in the junior high, and this many kids in the high school, and facilitates things, especially if you’ve got folks who are deployed. You want to make sure that they’re settling into the community.

The community liaison officer also has information about the economic impact that a base has on the area. We don’t have any of that, including a report on how waste is being handled. They’re handling the oil fluid changes for numerous heavy vehicles every day, and I don’t know how they’re disposing that oil. Their property is directly on the river. It is waterfront property in southern Maverick County, and there’s no information whatsoever. Every other military base in the United States provides this information. You can get it. It’s submitted to the EPA. It’s submitted to the state authority, but Texas considers themselves to be exempt because it’s under an emergency declaration. God forbid we have an outbreak of COVID or measles on this base, because they have no public health plan, and God forbid there’s any kind of hazardous waste, because not only is there no list of what they have and how it’s being disposed of, but we don’t know about it. We have no emergency plan for it. And so if I were the people of Laredo, I would be up here in Eagle Pass saying, “What are you guys doing there on the river? And how does that affect us?” Because the river is the number one source of water for the city of Laredo. It’s also for the city of Eagle Pass, but our water intake is above Camp Eagle.

Since you mention Laredo, I want to ask you about your new organization, the Frontera Federation, which covers not just Eagle Pass but the entire border region. What inspired you to start this organization, and what are you hoping to achieve?

With the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, it’s harder for us to lead something that’s based out of Arizona or out of the Rio Grande Valley, when our name starts with the name of our town. Border Vigil, which I’ve been really active with since 2023, has brought a lot of attention to unnecessary deaths occurring on our border and has been very successful. But what do we do about all the other issues? Who’s advocating for the communities that are caught in this fight? And so that’s where the Frontera Federation was born. We’re not only looking at the human rights of the people who pass through our communities, but also the human rights of the people who live here.

People keep calling me an immigrant rights activist. I feel I’m more a border community activist, you know? I’m here to advocate for Eagle Pass and my sister communities up and down the border. Our tagline is “Border justice, migrant rights, health equity, one fight.” It’s all connected. What we’re seeing is race and class warfare. It is the same recipe, but it’s different ingredients. We’re looking at overpolicing. We’re looking at water being diverted away from our communities and going to businesses like SpaceX. We’re looking at resources being diverted from primary care and into law enforcement. What it comes down to is taking resources from the most vulnerable and giving them to the wealthy.

My codirector, Ari Sawyer, is working on documenting human rights abuses in Mexico and the United States. I want to build the accountability tools for our elected officials. We’re going to create legislative scorecards. It’s great to be working with other organizations. For example, The Border Organization out of Del Rio. And I’ve spoken with the Laredo Immigrant Alliance. Again, we all have similar issues. They are just a little bit different in each community. And so we want to have these legislative scorecards so we can go and say, OK, all three of our organizations spoke with our representatives, our senators. This is what they said. Let’s hold them accountable. And these tools, the scorecards and such, should help us with that.

As I mentioned in the beginning, we have folks who will come into town, see the soldiers, and be afraid, even though there’s nothing to be afraid of. Here, we are experts in our own lives. We are experts in our own community. I want my friends and neighbors here in Eagle Pass and along the border to tell their own story. And you know, we’re tracking human rights abuses, but we also want to document abuses of our community. On a 55-mile trip from Eagle Pass to Del Rio, we counted 13 different DPS squad cars on the side of the road.

How can we tell that story? We want to change the narrative so that people understand that the real story is one of neglect. We want to revitalize our border communities, not militarize them.