this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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While it is indeed absolutely horrible and inhumane for everyone involved there... this is one shitty and biased article.
It sounded like they were forced to walk into booby traps full or barbed wire or something. While in reality they took a risk and it didn't work out.
I mean, there were still razor wire booby traps in the water. Whether or not they were forced to cross is irrelevant, literal death traps hidden in the water is absolutely inhumane.
Where in the article did you see that it was in the water?
You know what the Rio Grande is made of?
Mostly razor wire?
It's a dry river. But this is just a normal fence that cattlemen all over the state use to keep people out/off their ranches.
Really? I live in Texas and have never once seen a booby trapped cow farm.
Right, because a booby trap is illegal so you won't see that anywhere, but barb-wire like this, is 100% legal and used all over the state.
"Booby trap" is a description of its concealedness. These are concealed, on purpose. That's the issue.
Moreover, they're not barbed wire, they're razor wire. There's a massive difference between barbed wire and razor wire.
There is no legal distinction. Anywhere you are allowed to use barbwire you are allowed to use Razorwire (TM) and both are used all over the world as passive barriers and no where are barbwire or "razorwire" considered a "booby trap."
Using legality as a gauge for morality is not always the best thing to do, especially when these are law enforcement agencies operating entirely within the law.
So you're being wilfully obtuse. Nowhere was anyone implying the use of barbed wire is what makes it a booby trap. Every single time it was mentioned, it was clear: it is a booby trap because it is a purposefully hidden device meant to cause harm to those who stumble upon it by accident.
It also does matter the distinction between razor wire and barbed wire. Barbed wire you can hold in your hand. You can grip it, move your hand along it, and indeed are unlikely to be very harmed by encountering it; it is designed as an unpleasant deterrant, not a dangerous one. Razorwire, on the other hand, is designed to cause harm: every part of it is dangerous, and an encounter with it would result in deep lacerations.
But again, it could be barbed wire and my point would stand: the concealment of it is what makes it a booby trap, and what makes it a problem.
If you want to talk about morality, then you don't need to even mention legal terms like booby-trap. They are irrelevant. I like Jezebel and I am a militant leftist. I am also for unrestricted immigration while still making crossing at non-official border points illegal. But non of these things matter in my initial argument.
If you think borders/countries should exist, like everyone except for born-too-soon anarchists, then there is no problem here. Jezebel aren't anarchists though. If pressed they will say the disagree with the current US policy on immigration. Not that they all borders should be open at every geographic point of entry.
So they are bringing in legal terms like "booby-trap" to try to muddy the waters instead of saying what their criticism is. Their criticism is that current border-patrol policy's are too harsh (I agree), but securing a border can't be a clean thing. Either a border exists as a State enforced entity or it doesn't. If they want to say that the US should open it's borders, I'm on board, that doesn't mean free crossing into the US at every geographic spot. So in order to discourage crossing at non-official crossings, the only answer is passive barriers. If you are against passive barriers then you have to make that clear in the text, but Jezebel didn't do that.
Completely visible barriers would do the trick.
You've somehow, again, managed to miss the point: the purpose was not just deterrence, the purpose was to hide them and cause unexpected harm. I'm not using booby trap to evoke any legality relating to the word; I'm using the word to evoke the horrendously inhumane use of hidden weapons meant to cause harm to those who accidentally stumble upon them.
You're defending a horrific practice in the guise of it being a necessary evil, when in all actuality, it's just one horrific out of many not-horrific implementations of something that you're overtly in favor of.
Ah, already to the "intent" argument. The intent is 100% to stop migrants. That is the intent of literally every single border. If you are jumping into that trap and saying that the problem here is the specific method used to stop migrants, you are playing their game and are basically just a liberal.
No.
The intent is to maim a human being.
What you are talking about is just a bonus...
Except the Rio Grande, I suppose.
Oh no, it's strongly biased against hidden death traps, how horrible
Again, where did you see that they are hidden? The only image in that article is that of some guy standing in front of clearly visible barbed wire...
sounds non obvious to me
sounds non obvious to me
That's a stock image the news papers ran with because they dont feel like driving out to the site of the incident.
I’ve met toddlers with better reading comprehension than you.
Yeah, dude. Set up some booby traps and argue that they willingly walked into them. See how that works out for you in court. Let’s see how many years in jail you get.
https://theprepared.com/blog/booby-trap-laws/
You don't know what a booby trap is. In Texas, where this happens, barbwire is a passive barrier, and not subject to booby trap laws.
Not when you hide it.
The "hidden" claim is only by an anonymous witness reported by a bias source. Like even if the barbwire was hidden, what is the point of the article? That actually our border policy is fine, if only the barbwire fences were painted with high-vis?
And again. Where in the article does it say that it's booby trapped? There's not even an image or anything. The only image of barbed wire is one where it's clearly visible.
The headline literally calls it a trap.
And the picture is not the spot. Here is the description from the article:
If he lived to obey the law he should look up Katko v. Briney. The case is notable for the proposition that, although a landowner has no duty to make his property safe for trespassers, he may not set deadly traps against them.
Yea, fortunately barbwire IS NOT a booby trap and Katko v Briney wasn't talking about barbwire.
It's razor wire, not barbwire. It caused life-threatening injuries (in one case caused a miscarriage - isn't abortion murder, according to many folks?) and was deliberately placed in spots where it wouldn't be seen.
It's a booby trap. It doesn't have to literally be a shotgun set up in exactly the same way as Katko v Briney for it to count as one.
What are you, fucking Jigsaw? If you place traps designed to murder people you are murdering them and the state shouldn't be allowed to murder migrants. Do you have some other idea about what should be allowed to do with migrants? Feel free to share with the class.
I'm complaining about the article itself... It is clearly written in a way that you imagine the worst possible thing, but doesn't show any hint of proof for it. Literally the only imagine of barbed wire on that site, is one where it a clearly visible high fence (stock photo).
Also there are no other sources for this in the internet that I could quickly find. It's just a sob story to emotionally manipulate you.
Don't be a coward. Your argument wasn't that the article was false. Your argument was that it made it sound like someone forced them into the traps. Then you, based on your own opinion, said that its sounds like the migrants took a chance that didn't work out. That is you expressing the opinion that literal death traps is something they account for in their risk analysis and that is fair game.
Its ok to be a coward btw. You can just edit that part out and admit it was a stupid and monstrous thing to say. It's fine, but don't pretend you said something else while we can read what you said.
Yeah this is horseshit, fuck off.
I'm seeing this line of thinking more and more. The echo chambers increase in intensity every day.
"If you have a negative emotional reaction to a news story about your team, ignore it, it's a liberal psyop!" - How miraculously convenient for your average psychopathic conservative. From the same people who espouse "law and order" and "Christian morality" but also "it's not a crime if you're not caught".
What an insanely ghoulish take.
Here I'm referring to a ghoul as being monstrous and not human because of the total lack of empathy and lack of curiosity. Two of the characteristics that most people would say are most human
Riight, riight... because we all know that being pregnant turns a woman into Evil Knievel.
I think you may have some leftover shoe polish on the side of your face, Clyde.
So everyone should be able to cross the border illegally? No need for check points or visas?
Our only options are open borders and razer-wire-wrapped barrels in the river?
No, you're options are travel legally or suffer the consequences of trying to do so illegally. Did a border patrol agent karate kick her into the wire? What forced that human being to travel through it? Their own decisions.
The consequences are arrest, jail and deportation. Not losing your baby after getting sliced open by razor wire. You sound like a horribly inhumane person.
You do understand that this whole fetishizing-imaginary-lines-on-a-map-thing isn't even traditional in the US, right? It only became a thing after WW1?
While that website is known for terrible writing and fact checking, this isn't one of those times.
(To clarify the accusation: They once wrote an article complainig about Chun-Li not being included in the latest Mortal Kombat release. They ended up updating the article to clarify that they were not being ironic or making a joke. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. )