At Ground Zero on the Texas border, a round of 'Combat Golf'
At the center of a fierce legal battle over immigration enforcement is a city park along the border in Eagle Pass, Texas.
In January, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered National Guard troops to take over the park, known as Shelby Park, to intercept migrants crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Now Humvees guard makeshift gates at a place where residents often gather to picnic and play. There are rolls of barbed wire everywhere. Men and women in camouflage patrol the edge.
Yet there is one group of people who, as always, remain free to enter Shelby Park, no questions asked: golfers.
The Eagle Pass Municipal Golf Course, located on a slope that slopes down to the river, has continued to welcome players even as the area has increasingly resembled an urban conflict zone. Anyone can play the nine holes, for a weekend rate of $20, including clubs.
Its continued operation is one of the great contrasts of life in this small part of the border, where desperate migrants surrender to Border Patrol in lush pecan orchards, and law enforcement officers in Texas, locked in a tense standoff with the federal government, also cautiously are. so as not to damage the greens of the golf course.
Upon arriving at the course, it's immediately clear that something different is going on: Golf carts are lined up along a towering black fence that runs along either side of the golf shop. The structure was established by the federal government more than ten years agolong before the recent surge of migrants, to help maintain security at the U.S. border.
A layered view unfolds from the first tee. On the Mexican side, painted murals can be seen in Piedras Negras, which rises near the riverbank. On the American side there is a wall of rusting shipping containers with an accordion wire on top along the water. The containers have been placed there in increasing numbers by Texas in the past two yearspart of Mr. Abbott's border security program, known as Operation Lone Star.
The risk associated with a wrong shot increases as the course descends closer to the riverbank, where National Guard troops are most active.
One day, a white pickup truck with a trailer full of concertina wire rattled along a waterway. Golfers said they had grown accustomed to the presence of military vehicles and the new dangers they brought.
“My friend once hit a car,” said Rolf Rothen, a Swiss immigrant who works as a chef at a casino in Eagle Pass. He said one of the state vehicles happened to be patrolling near the course. “It's OK.”
Near the containers, discarded wire lay in a rough bundle, with pieces of torn migrant clothing still stuck in the sharp points. Mr. Rothen said that on another occasion he had hit a ball into a piece of concertina wire.
“I left it there,” he said.
A few holes run south to north along the river, where the tall reeds that once rose along the riverbank and provided an effective shelter for unauthorized migrants have been cut down and replaced with shipping containers.
The third tee is located near the columns of one of the two international bridges that connect Eagle Pass to Mexico. Until recently, the shaded area under the bridge was used by Federal Border Patrol agents as a staging area to detain and process large numbers of migrants.
But that changed after Texas took over Shelby Park and banned the Border Patrol from using the park, complaining that federal agents were helping migrants cross by cutting the state's concertina wire. Texas and the federal government are currently fighting in court over that, and the much broader and more consequential issue of who has ultimate authority over the border.
But even in December, when thousands of people were crossing Eagle Pass every day, the golf course remained open. In a widely shared video posted that month on TikTok, a golfer hit a drive, and a large group of migrants under the bridge erupted in cheers.
The number of migrants entering the park fell sharply in January. Those who do enter Shelby Park are arrested by state police, charged with trespassing and taken to a local jail.
From the fairway of the fourth hole you could occasionally hear a patrol boat passing in shallow water, its propeller sounding like a helicopter. Some boats are owned by Florida, which supports border security efforts in Texas.
The hole is tricky because to get to the green you have to hit over an arroyo, a drainage channel densely lined with concertina wire. As the wind picked up, a torn blue parka tumbled across the grass, away from the concertina wire and containers. The sleeves were torn in several places and the white padding fell onto the grass.
Fernando Bonilla, 56, remembered his shot at the hole the previous day. “The only reason I didn't get a bad hook in the Rio Grande was the containers,” he said. He treated the unusual obstacle the way he treats the fall leaves on the course in his home state of Georgia, he said. “According to the rules, you can play from the leaves without losing a trick. So I didn't discount the impact of hitting the containers.”
Another obstacle was a group of National Guard troops meeting nearby in a large olive green tent.
“Yesterday I was afraid of hitting the Texas National Guard, so I played toward the bridge,” Mr. Bonilla said. “Then today I thought: 'I'm going for it.' Because it is actually further away than you think.”
He added: “This is combat golf.”
Later in the day, Mr. Abbott held a news conference nearby, along with 13 other Republican governors, to denounce President Biden's immigration policies, not far from the fourth green.
The presence of so much law enforcement infrastructure on the trail has sometimes created tension with the city of Eagle Pass, which oversees its operation. The city has billed the state for more than $10,000 in damages, mainly caused by trucks driving over the grass and damaging water pipes, according to interim City Manager Ivan Morua.
But the national attention that has come to Eagle Pass because of the clash over border politics has been good for the golf course, said its manager, Carla Rodriguez, 23, who grew up in town and played on the high school golf team.
“We see a lot of walk-ins,” she said. 'Some play. And some just want to see what the border looks like.” She says the club also has many Mexican members who come from Piedras Negras to play, usually on Thursdays, and then return.
City officials said they used any additional revenue to help repair patchy greens and some dusty areas along the fairways.
“The course is probably the best he's ever had,” Ms. Rodriguez said.
Even with the new obstacles.