The bold Texas plan to stop migrants has hit a wall

HUGO AND MAGALI Urbina used to consider Greg Abbott, Texas’s governor, a kindred spirit. At the start of the summer the conservative Christian retirees could be found fishing on the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, where their pecan orchard abuts Texas’s border with Mexico. Migrants would wade through the water onto their land, where federal border agents usually picked the intruders up without much drama.In July everything changed. Texas seized the strip of land along the river against the Urbinas’ will. State troopers laid down razor-wire and migrants bleeding from cuts began to climb ashore. Unlike the federal agents, state police were directed not to help the new arrivals and, by some accounts, were told to push them back into the river. By Christmas the couple had grown accustomed to finding little girls wandering alone in their orchard and seeing dead bodies beneath the trees. They blame Mr Abbott.