Jean Guerrero: Can Texas Gov. Abbott set lethal border barriers and still win Latino votes?

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's man-made killing traps on the Rio Grande have taken border enforcement to new levels of barbarity.

Since border militarization began in the 1990s, anti-immigrant hardliners could deflect blame for hundreds of yearly deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border, pointing to natural dangers in the region's deserts and rivers. Now, as bodies are discovered around saw-equipped buoy barriers and barbed wire water traps of Operation Lone Star, the illusion of innocence has been blown away.

Could Abbott face a backlash among Texas Latino voters, as Republican Gov. Pete Wilson faced three decades ago with California Latinos on his recent enforcement actions. One Abbott supporter with property on the Rio Grande, Magali Urbina, told the Texas Tribune this month that she was deeply disturbed to see a pregnant woman push through concertina wire in the water, her arms cut and bloodied.