Migrants Overpower Texas National Guard, Tear Down Border Fence

New videos on Thursday show a "riot" of illegal migrants attempting to enter the United States from Mexico at the El Paso border in Texas as a reporter said the Texas National Guard was "overrun by migrants."

Crossings on the southwest land border in Texas totaled 68,260 in January, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data—a drop from the 149,806 migrants who entered in December, but still among the highest rates in the country, further encouraging state officials to try and take matters into their own hands.

Efforts by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other conservative officials to enact their own immigration laws, allowing for the arrest, detainment and removal of suspected illegal immigrants, continue to be litigated.

After the Supreme Court voted Tuesday to allow the law—Texas Senate Bill 4—to be enacted, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals placed the legislation back on hold.

The scene was described as a "riot" by New York Post reporter Jennie Taer, who said that there were hundreds of migrants who had "decided they had enough" of Texas soldiers returning them to Mexico.

"This is the moment when TX National Guard became overrun by migrants rioting to get across the border here in El Paso today," Taer wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a different angle of the scene from the U.S. side of the border. "We were there and saw it all happen. Absolute chaos here."

In a separate video posted by Taer on X, she described the moment Texas National Guard became "overrun by migrants" as a fence is seen being pulled down. Taer also described the scene as "absolute chaos."

Newsweek reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety and other officials via email for comment.

A different angle, possibly from hours earlier based on the post timestamp, shows migrants breaching razor wire placed by Texas National Guard soldiers.

"Hundreds of migrants were pushed south of the concertina wire in the middle of the night by Texas National Guard," Mexican photojournalist J. Omar Ornelas wrote on X, formerly Twitter, accompanied by video. "Hours later they again breached the concertina and made a rush for the border wall in El Paso, Texas."

Ornelas, who lives on the northern border of Latin America, said crossing migrants are from Africa, Central America, Colombia and Venezuela.

Physical barriers like razor wire, floating barriers in the Rio Grande, and walls as high as 30 feet are commonplace in areas like El Paso, becoming the norm after the launch of Operation Lone Star in March 2021.

El Paso has been labeled as a popular migrant destination, with local doctors saying that migrant falls from the tall border walls have resulted in more consistent and "devastating" injuries to lower extremities.

David Stout, a county commissioner in El Paso's Precinct 2 for almost 10 years, previously told Newsweek that Abbott and company want "chaos" at the border for political gain.

"They want to create chaos," Stout said. "They don't want to see the issues that we're facing here on the border. They want there to be chaos so that it will play into their rhetoric that there is chaos on the border."