‘Mexico’s Door’: Daily Wire’s Kassy Akiva Sees The Border Crisis Firsthand
As we prepare to enter the new year, we’re taking you back to some of The Daily Wire’s best reporting from 2024. This article was originally published on August 2.
With more than 10 million illegal crossings recorded since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, the southern border faces an unprecedented crisis.
In a new documentary, The Daily Wire’s Kassy Akiva shows the chaos firsthand.
Akiva embedded with Texas State troopers and toured the southern border by police cruiser, helicopter, and airboat. “Mexico’s Door,” now streaming on DailyWire+, brings viewers along for the ride, and highlights Texas’s ongoing efforts to protect the border after the Biden-Harris administration failed to do so.
While in Eagle Pass, Texas, Akiva met with a migrant whose wife gave birth just after swimming across the Rio Grande, a rancher who has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because migrants keep cutting his fences, and members of the Texas National Guard and state law enforcement officers on the front lines of defending America’s border.
WATCH: Mexico’s Door: The Center of America’s Border Fight
‘Mexico’s Door’ was filmed after Governor Greg Abbott ordered Texas state troopers and the Texas National Guard to secure the southern border under Operation Lone Star.
Among the officers Akiva meets are Texas State Trooper Jacklyn Gooding, who patrols the border in search of human smugglers and illegal immigrants. Gooding recounts arresting a smuggler last April who was wanted for murder.
“It was a pursuit when I tried to stop the car initially, and we were able to capture the two individuals that were involved in the smuggling event, as well as all the undocumented individuals,” Gooding says. “The suspects were armed at the time: both of them had firearms, and the driver had an active warrant for murder out of Louisiana.”
Akiva encounters a Venezuelan migrant behind the razor wire fence who illegally swam across the Rio Grande while carrying a three-year-old. The migrant says the child belonged to his wife who went into labor and was transported to a hospital right after reaching the shore.
Lt. Chris Olivarez from the Texas Department of Public Safety tells Akiva pregnant mothers commonly wait to cross the border until they are about to go into labor, to ensure their children become citizens.
“To be that far in your pregnancy, they have to know more or less when she is going to give birth in order to cross on this side and cross here in the United States,” Olivarez says. “We see that a lot—where a lot of pregnant females who are coming across, they will wait, usually when they are about to give birth. Then they’ll cross into the United States and they’ll have the baby that same day. or they’ll have it right at the river as they are crossing.”
Olivarez added that migrants also use children in hopes that the troopers will be more willing to assist them in entering the country.
“They use the children in those types of situations because they know there is a human side to us,” Olivarez said.
Olivarez takes Akiva through the 47-acre Shelby Park, which was a focal point in the struggle between Texas and the Biden-Harris administration before Abbott took control of the park, barring federal agents from entry.
Apprehensions of illegal migrants in the Del Rio sector, which includes Shelby Park, were at a high of 71,050 in December. It dropped to 16,710 in January when Abbott took control.
Thirteen Republican governors joined Abbott at Shelby Park in February to support the governor’s ongoing feud with the Biden-Harris administration. Fourteen states have sent personnel to help Texas secure its border.
Before the State of Texas controlled Shelby Park, the area saw about two thousand illegal border crossings a day, with many migrants swimming across the river and turning themselves in to Customs and Border Protection. But with Texas personnel on the scene, migrants are arrested for illegally trespassing into the park, told to swim back, or wait in hopes that border patrol picks them up. The area now averages about less than one encounter a week, according to Olivarez.
Akiva takes an airboat tour of the Rio Grande with Florida and Texas state troopers, who say the border around the area of Eagle Pass averages about one drowning a day. Olivarez says Texas has stepped up the effort to prevent water crossings by putting up barriers, while the federal government has been reluctant to do so.
While on the boat, Akiva’s team spots a raft staged on the shore of the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, presumably to transport migrants. Mexican troops removed the raft after they were alerted by Texas law enforcement.
From a helicopter, Akiva spots hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing that migrants take off after they finish their swim and place over the razor wire fences to avoid being cut while climbing over.
Akiva concludes her trip by meeting Texas rancher Wayne King, who says he lost over $400,000 from migrants cutting thousands of holes in his fence, allowing his African and Indian exotic animals meant for recreational hunting to escape.
“If they really wanted to do this right, why are they coming to my pastures?” King says. “Why are they destroying water troughs? Water lines, windmills, fences? Why are they doing that? Why don’t they just cross the bridge where they can get all of the government’s handouts and everything’s hunky dory?”
King, who lives in a house on the 8,200-acre ranch, says he’s been woken up by migrants in the middle of the night. He says he is “tickled to death” that Abbott has stepped up to secure the border.
“Abbott is doing his utmost best to protect us here on the border,” he says. “It’s just crazy. I mean, but what else do you want to call it when our state is trying to protect us, but yet our federal government is trying to stop the state from protecting us.”