EAGLE PASS, Texas — The soldiers from Louisiana stand around, sit in folding chairs and recline on the beds of Humvees, eyeing the thicket of razor wire that blankets the bank of the Rio Grande and waiting for a potential threat that rarely materializes.
When migrants clamber from the slow-moving water and probe for openings in the mass of metal, the soldiers tell them to walk back into the water.
“We stand here, we watch and we tell the immigrants to turn around,” Private Christian Specks, 19, said while monitoring the river Wednesday. His uniform included sunglasses, body armor, an M4 carbine and a fleur-de-lis patch on his left shoulder.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry sent three rotations of 50 Louisiana Army National Guard soldiers to this arid border town last month to help his Texas counterpart, Greg Abbott, amid a furor over illegal crossings and porous border security. Landry and other Louisiana Republicans have joined Abbott in railing against President Joe Biden for failing to curb an onslaught of migrants through the southern border.
But reality this week along the border in Eagle Pass looked much quieter than their rhetoric would suggest.
By the time the first rotation of Louisiana soldiers arrived and took up their positions along a sandy, windblown stretch of river just south of Eagle Pass's Shelby Park, the influx of migrants that made national headlines had ebbed. A reporter and photographer saw no one attempting to…
