This doctor treated migrants’ severe injuries at the US-Mexico wall: ‘Political decisions made it as violent as possible’

Dr Brian Elmore witnessed a public health crisis unfold at the border near El Paso. He reflects on why it was like a perverse Groundhog Day'

In late spring 2024, Dr Brian Elmore was working out of a mobile clinic, providing medical treatment to migrants in Ciudad Juarez, just south of the US-Mexico border wall. One of his patients, a Venezuelan man with a fractured arm and a detached left chest from his sternum and clavicle, told Elmore that Mexican immigration officials broke his arm when he first got to town, and that rubber bullets fired by Texas national guardsmen had caused his chest injuries.

The man somehow had managed to fashion a shoddily made splint for his arm, but his chest would require surgery. When an ambulance arrived, the criminal group that controlled the riverine area refused to let him leave. The Texas guardsmen looked on from the US side of the river. It was heartbreaking," Elmore said of the spectacle.