The U.S. Border Patrol is preparing for the migrant caravan – still weeks and hundreds of miles away – by conducting a “crowd control exercise” on Election Day in a Hispanic neighborhood a half-mile away from their polling station.
That Hispanic neighborhood is in El Paso, which coincidentally happens to be the hometown of Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the popular Democratic candidate challenging U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.
Texas Monthly, reporting on the “exercise,” notes that Senator Cruz “has welcomed news of the deployment and criticized his opponent for being soft on immigration. ‘He is waiting on the Rio Grande with welcome baskets and foot massages,’ Cruz said of O’Rourke recently. Cruz has also consistently pointed out that he has received the endorsement of the national U.S. Border Patrol Union.”
A Customs and Border Protection spokesman describes the Election Day event as part of ongoing preparations and insists there is “no link to the election date.”
U.S. Rep. David Price (D-NC) accuses the Border Patrol of engaging “in voter intimidation tactics. In the United States of America. Add this to the list of investigations for the next Congress,” he warns.
UPDATE:
The ACLU of Texas says Border Patrol canceled the exercise, but criticized CBP for planning the “exercises” on Election Day:
“It shouldn’t have taken outrage from us, congressmen, and the community for them to recognize that this would cause serious problems” on Election Day, they tweeted.
Image by U.S Customs and Border Protection via Flickr