On April 22 Texas Army National Guardsman Specialist Bishop C. Evans drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to rescue two people struggling in the river. Specialist Evans (Spc. is the military abbreviation) grew up in Arlington, Texas.
As a soldier serving in a Texas task force deployed to assist the U.S. Border Patrol and police, it’s a fair bet Evans knew the individuals were illegally crossing the Mexico-U.S. border.
I’m certain Bishop Evans’ military mission was to observe and assist police. He had a radio to call for help.
However, he saw human beings in immediate danger. So, he acted, disregarding his safety in order to aid endangered human beings.
Evans was on duty in uniformed service when he died at the border. In my opinion Evans demonstrated the genuine courage of a decisive soldier willing to sacrifice beyond the call of duty. The tab on his uniform read “U.S. Army.” He was an American soldier subject to U.S. military law. We should laud his heroism.
Yet small White House voices dismiss his death because he was on “state” duty.
Bishop Evans had values. He valued human life. Patriotism is another demonstrated value. In high school he was on the JROTC drill team. He joined the National Guard in 2019 and served overseas.
The river took Evans’ valuable life. The migrants safely crossed into the United States.
Then Customs and Border Patrol arrested them. CNN and Dailymail.com cited a Texas Ranger source. The two migrants were suspected of being “involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking.”
Drug smugglers. Given the lethality of fentanyl, drug smugglers are a link in a chain that murders Americans by the thousands. Two milligrams can kill a human being. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from April 2020 to April 2021, over 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses and fentanyl was involved in two-thirds of the deaths.
Fact: Bishop Evans was a very good man who died attempting to rescue two criminals. Their criminal act jeopardized his life.
No matter how “woke” leftists feel about immigration, undocumented entrance into the United States is a violation of law. Trafficking illegal drugs is criminal. If the Rio Grande Two were smuggling fentanyl, then they were aiding mass murder.
Fact: Bishop Evans was an American who happened to be black. I’ve noticed major media neglect this fact. Evans’ life absolutely mattered, to his family, friends, fellow soldiers. Has Black Lives Matter taken a position on his death? The Biden administration avoids addressing his death. It doesn’t fit the Democrat Party’s current ethnically and culturally divisive narrative.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says the state’s border effort has caught “gang members, cartel insiders, cop-killers, rapists, and even suspected terrorists.” Other states have assisted Texas’ effort. We are seeing a state-led national effort to address a problem the Biden administration intentionally magnifies and inflames.
More bitter reality: The Associated Press reports that in March, migrant apprehensions “along the southern border soared to 221,000 ... a 22-year high.” Some six million migrants illegally enter the U.S. annually. Houston, Texas’s metropolitan area has about 6.6 million people. The U.S. cannot economically and socially sustain adding a Houston a year in uncontrolled immigration.
It’s a type of human wave invasion. So, call it the war it is: The Biden Border War. As for the migrants Evans tried to save, they were logistics personnel in China’s 21st-century Strategic Drug War.
Communist China is the world’s primary source of fentanyl. Beijing either ships it directly to the United States or smuggles it in via Mexico. The Chinese Communist Party has the power to control fentanyl production but doesn’t.
In 2017 the National Interest sardonically called China’s strategy the “Reverse Opium War.”
The historically informed get it. From 1839–1842 China’s Qing dynasty went to war with Britain to stop the Brits from selling opium in China. The drug threatened Chinese social cohesion.
China lost. China also lost the Second Opium War (1856–1860).
I’m historically sympathetic, but China is now attacking America with deadly illegal drugs.
Bishop Evans died as a soldier fighting in two wars threatening America.
