Is the Border Crisis Really Real??
The Latest Cluelessness from an Austin Press Institution
Good morning, friends,
Debated a bit about whether or not to publish this particular edition of the newsletter, but we realized there’s been no single thing more objectionable to us at this date and time than certain folks who ought to know better, still trying to claim that there is no border crisis. That it isn’t really real.
It takes a very special person to claim this at such a late date when even the Biden White House has started to pretend it’s going to do something about the crisis.
And, as it happens, we know one of these individuals personally from our old days past of doing TV news in Austin, TX.
His name is Fred Cantu, he’s more of a TV news personality than he is an actual journalist at this point. He’s a bit of a symptom of the ongoing irrelevance of local broadcasting in many communities. “Uncle Fred,” as many call him, has been on the air in Austin since 1980.
Can’t remember the last time Fred turned a “real” news story. If you asked him, he’d probably lie and tell you he can’t either, because the truth that it’s probably been a decade or two would be too embarrassing.
That said— it’s not like its Fred’s fault. He performs in the fashion that is most pleasing to his employers, and he’s managed to more or less cling to his job in the Austin market all these years, so by some measures one would say he’s been mightily successful.
That’s the tweet that caught our eye over the holidays. Fred and some character from Texas Public Radio named Pablo De La Rosa are trying to claim that the record numbers we’re seeing aren’t actually that high. That we’ve done this all before and “the nation survived.”
They have that chart full of numbers right there saying everything’s normal!
Must be true, friends.
Well, no— if you look— that stupid little chart only goes back to August 2022. We were deep in the middle of this thing by then. Try presenting a chart that goes back to 2016. Or 2018.
As it is, Cantu and De La Rosa are ignoring the well documented fact that we’re presently attempting to absorb so many millions of Central and South Americans, that they dwarf the populations of nearly half the States in the Union.
Do you know the word mendacious?
It means “Not telling the truth, lying.”
And it is most appropriately used when referring to political statements and increasingly, journalism.
That stupid little chart, even if it is 100-percent accurate in what it’s presenting, is being used in a mendacious fashion. And these two chumps— De La Rosa and Cantu are clapping along like clowns in a circus. “No crisis, no crisis! See? Chart! See? Numbers! Tra la la la la!”
Just what’s the difference between being mendacious and lying anyway? Well, Webster says one is more formal than the other, and suggestive of harmlessness. That is, if someone is being mendacious, it’s a less serious offense than if they were being a lying rat. A difference of degrees.
It may be worth noting that Cantu is originally from the Rio Grande Valley and De La Rosa works there now. If that’s worth noting, it’s also worth noting that the RGV’s numbers have been relatively steady and haven’t shown the same level of crisis being seen in the Del Rio sector and parts of rural Arizona.
No excuse though for the way these two are trying to cling to a long-ago blown out narrative that the crisis isn’t real.
That narrative was one of the reasons we first started the Dispatch— even now we struggle with communicating the sheer frustration felt with witnessing what is going on every day and having what amounts to unpaid political operatives insisting that it is all just in our pointy little heads and isn’t real.
We’ve said a lot of negative things about old Fred just now. So, we should probably point out that there’s a lot of good reasons many folks in Austin just sort of cluck their tongues, smile, and murmur something about “Uncle Fred,” when he puts his foot in his mouth.
He’s a very sweet old man. Very avuncular. Dignified. Classy, but in a normal sort of working man way. Not a wealthy “putting on airs type.” And it’s not just an act for the cameras.
Back in 2008 when the TV business was circling the drain, without a single drop of national advertising money out there for cars, razor blades, or beer, Fred was an easy target for the bean counters. There’s no denying the dignity he displayed while the contract talks went against him. Talking about a man who is the sole caretaker for at least one person with a serious disability. Don’t want to get too deep into his personal life, but Fred was one person who *needed* his job and at his age couldn’t afford to just pick up and hustle on over to the next gig in some other market. So Fred did what he had to do, which included a brief stint selling power tools at an Austin-area hardware store, before things got back to normal for him.
Very admirable. Very dignified in how he conducted himself in what could have been seen as humiliating circumstances.
But, like many folks he has a huge blind spot where it comes to the border and border issues. With many folks living and working in the RGV, or having an RGV background, one finds a sort of tunnel vision. For them, if it isn’t happening in the RGV, it isn’t real.
This hearkens back to some of the earliest points we’ve tried making at the Dispatch about how the border is absolutely not a 1-size fits all proposition— that there are major differences in culture and geography as you head north and west along the Rio Grande, and it’s the height of cluelessness whenever folks in Washington, Austin, or the RGV act otherwise.
Laredo is very different from McAllen, which is very different from Eagle Pass. Eagle Pass and Del Rio are neighbors—and yet, the two are also different from each other. It may have something to do with Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass having more of a freight/trade relationship and Acuna and Del Rio being more pastoral.
Can’t tell you how common it was, back in the day when we were covering news in Laredo, to get a breathless call from some Congressional staffer telling us to be sure and roll tape on a satellite feed from DC, where “major border news” was going to be announced.
Inevitably, we’d roll tape and try to make room in our shows, only to discover that this “major border news” only affected the RGV and had almost zero relevance to the Laredo area.
It happened all the time.
Must confess to some latent schadenfreude related to recent congressional field hearings in the RGV, where local press and dignitaries were told they would be participating in a very important border discussion. Folks must’ve felt like they’d been treated to a bait and switch when the discussion was almost entirely focused on the mayhem and chaos in the Del Rio sector, including a roughly 15-minute video about the boulders that have been erected outside Brackett ISD campus to keep high speed pursuits from crashing into students and buildings.
Can you imagine? Folks in the RGV being forced to sit through a bunch of Kinney County and Del Rio sector talk for once? Hilarious! They were pretty upset about it, if memory serves.
Why do they do these things? Why do they host everything in the RGV? One imagines its a logistical matter. Easier to catch commercial flights in and out of the area.
In order to get to Del Rio and Eagle Pass they pretty much have to drive out from San Antonio. This contributes to the impression people have that McAllen and Harlingen are the end all be all when it comes to the border.
We’ve rambled quite a bit here. Some readers may be wondering what the point was, or even who cares.
What this whole episode highlights, to our mind, is the importance of examining these folks and their backgrounds, as they report on what’s happening. Don’t mind confessing— that it seems almost inevitable that when we come across reporters making these sorts of crazy statements this late in the game, they are inevitably from the RGV.
Does that mean all the reporters from the RGV suck? Obviously not. Some are objectively excellent, or at least no worse than their counterparts in other parts of the state. But the RGV is its own place. They used to call it the Magic Valley. The Magic Valley— that’s a name suggestive of a place divorced from everywhere else. Of course it is. It’s magic!
And some of that sort of separation still exists today. It’s an insular area with many of its own unique customs and expectations that don’t exist anywhere else in the State of Texas. Maybe we should just cut Uncle Fred some slack.
Or not. Forget the slack.
This is something like gaslighting. Or the most horrible expression of Alzheimer’s or some other age-related deficiency.
Fred’s a sweet old man. And it doesn’t feel quite right dunking on him. But this is inexcusable.
Shame on him and that twerp at NPR. At best, they don’t know what they’re talking about. At worst, they’re mendacious dirtbags.
A screwy little story out of the Daily Mail caught our eye.
It details a series of incidents Sunday in the El Paso area, where allegedly, at least one Border Patrol agent and one Texas Guardsman are accused of sending “migrants” back to Mexico instead of letting them cross concertina wire barriers and moving them into processing.
As the reporter hastens to tell the reader— for the Border Patrol agent at least— that’s illegal, and according to current policy, the agent should have ushered them right in and allowed them to claim asylum.
As for the Guardsman, he was apparently distracted by the overwhelming numbers, and the “migrants” he initially tried to send back were able to slip across anyway once his back was turned.
We’re told an investigation is underway. Don’t personally expect much to come of it— if the agent is even identified, he’ll more than likely be able to chalk it up to some kind of mistaken communication between him and the Venezuelan, who must’ve misunderstood what he was trying to tell him, or some such.
As for the Guardsman… well, it all kind of speaks to what we’ve been saying for a while now.
A lot of low-information conservatives out there seem to be thinking that Texas is getting it done. That Greg Abbott and them Tejas boys are guarding the border. And it just isn’t so. Abbott’s doing more than any governor has in the history of the State, but it still hasn’t done much to close the border.
We feel a lot of sympathy for Abbott as he goes through the motions of trying to highlight federal fecklessness and establish a history of trying to work with them.
Many around the country are repelled by the notion of a true rift between Texas and the Federal Government and rightfully so. Most are not ready to consider what it might look like if Abbott and the State went “all the way,” in opposition to the Feds and truly locked it down. What it might look like, or what it might lead to.
And let’s be honest— Abbott is also trying to protect the State’s economy. One imagines the calculation by some blow-dried hairdo in Austin is that most Texans will tolerate the current state of affairs to some degree, as long as the money’s good and the stores are full.
Is our imaginary political consultant correct? So far, seems to be.
And yet— we keep coming back to how some of these “border experts” on twitter keep saying how Texas has no standing. How Texas has no power over immigration and how Abbott is pushing it and should stand down before the Feds slap him down.
They’ve been saying that for a while, haven’t they?
And yet— it just hasn’t happened, has it?
Recall our past Dispatch, about leftwing fears about what might happen if a showdown actually made it to the Supreme Court? It was more than a year ago, and not much has changed.
Analysis Paralysis: Allegations that ACLU Quietly Squelching Anti-OLS Lawsuits
Faster please.
Have a great morning— am told today’s going to be a big day, with some kind of a big announcement in Eagle Pass featuring a great big gang of dignitaries.
We’ll see. It feels safe to predict that this is going to be another “informational visit,” that winds up being short of actual concrete news.
Until then— keep it cool and keep your eyes and ears open. No matter how we all might wish things were ‘normal,’ they actually aren’t. At best, we’re all blindly feeling our way through a slowly but visibly still evolving new normal. Spooky, no?
That’s the thing about a transitory period. It all sort of shines a spotlight on how shaky certain foundations can become— foundations that in ordinary times one would safely assume to be rock solid.
As always, this newsletter is an independent work product, produced as separately as possible from our day job fielding public information requests for Kinney County. We make this announcement as always in the spirit of full disclosure and to stay in keeping with County policies regarding social media.
Edited for consistency of capitalization of the name De La Rosa, and to include the word "in" in the phrase commonly written as "foot in mouth."