And So Goes the Crisis on the Southern Border****UPDATED 31 OCTOBER 2024
- Thread starter hm1996
- Start date
Estimates of the Del Rio Crossings went as high as 30,000. Only those individuals "exhibiting Covid symptoms" were tested, the rest were placed in "other than detention" according to the WH press secretary.
Quote:About 12,400 out of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that about 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only approximately 3,000 are in detention, (Mayorkas) said.
When asked about what will happen to the 12,000 who were released in the past week, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.
He forgot to add, If we can find them!
DHS Secretary: As Many as 12,000 Illegal Haitian Immigrants Released Into the US in Recent Days
By Jack Phillips
September 26, 2021 Updated: September 26, 2021
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that a significant number of Haitian illegal immigrants who had amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border last week are being released into the United States.
About 12,400 out of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that about 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only approximately 3,000 are in detention, he said.
“Approximately, I think it’s about ten thousand or so, twelve thousand,” Mayorkas told “Fox News Sunday” when he was asked about the number of Haitian illegal aliens who have been released into the interior of the United States. The number could rise as 5,000 more cases are processed, he remarked further.
Mayorkas added that the figure of those being released “could be even higher” and added that the “number that are returned could be even higher.” Striking a defensive tone, Mayorkas said, “What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it.”
“Legislative reform is needed,” he said, adding that the U.S. “immigration system is broken.”
The Department of Justice in 2017 previously estimated that about 43 percent of illegal aliens released into the U.S. miss their immigration court hearings. When asked about what will happen to the 12,000 who were released in the past week, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.
“We have enforcement guidelines in place that provide that individuals who are recent border crossers who do not show up for their hearings are enforcement priorities, and will be removed,” Mayorkas said.
Last week, more than 15,000 Haitians congregated underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and essentially constructed a shantytown before numerous local officials sounded the alarm that a humanitarian crisis was brewing.
Epoch Times Photo
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas updates reporters on the effort to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the United States, in Washington on Sept. 3, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
DHS officials, including Mayorkas, on Sept. 24 said that the encampment under the bridge was cleared out. A day later, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that the Texas border crossing will be partially reopened.
The agency also said it is planning to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some progressive groups.
The number of people at the Del Rio encampment peaked last weekend as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing. While Mayorkas and other White House officials have asserted that the border is closed, Republicans have said that the administration’s decisions to rescind a number of Trump-era immigrant orders have triggered a surge of illegal immigration.
All the while, Mayorkas and other senior officials have dedicated a significant amount of time in news conferences condemning some Border Patrol agents who were seen on horseback near Haitians who illegally crossed the border. The photographer who shot those pictures last week said that the agents were not whipping the migrants, as some officials and Democratic lawmakers had claimed.
“Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses,” photographer Paul Ratje told local station KTSM, explaining the situation on the ground.
“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” he said, referring to the agents. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/dhs-secretary-as-many-as-12000-illegal-haitian-immigrants-released-into-the-us-in-recent-days_4015864.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-09-26-1&mktids=8414d0efe24889bbb5b5a3a49b944798&est=THasS4icn21SrLdI6CNwhij6huv925eLZfnWMG2RpzckCT1kZDXJUZu%2B
Quote:About 12,400 out of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that about 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only approximately 3,000 are in detention, (Mayorkas) said.
When asked about what will happen to the 12,000 who were released in the past week, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.
He forgot to add, If we can find them!
DHS Secretary: As Many as 12,000 Illegal Haitian Immigrants Released Into the US in Recent Days
By Jack Phillips
September 26, 2021 Updated: September 26, 2021
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that a significant number of Haitian illegal immigrants who had amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border last week are being released into the United States.
About 12,400 out of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that about 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only approximately 3,000 are in detention, he said.
“Approximately, I think it’s about ten thousand or so, twelve thousand,” Mayorkas told “Fox News Sunday” when he was asked about the number of Haitian illegal aliens who have been released into the interior of the United States. The number could rise as 5,000 more cases are processed, he remarked further.
Mayorkas added that the figure of those being released “could be even higher” and added that the “number that are returned could be even higher.” Striking a defensive tone, Mayorkas said, “What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it.”
“Legislative reform is needed,” he said, adding that the U.S. “immigration system is broken.”
The Department of Justice in 2017 previously estimated that about 43 percent of illegal aliens released into the U.S. miss their immigration court hearings. When asked about what will happen to the 12,000 who were released in the past week, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.
“We have enforcement guidelines in place that provide that individuals who are recent border crossers who do not show up for their hearings are enforcement priorities, and will be removed,” Mayorkas said.
Last week, more than 15,000 Haitians congregated underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and essentially constructed a shantytown before numerous local officials sounded the alarm that a humanitarian crisis was brewing.
Epoch Times Photo
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas updates reporters on the effort to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the United States, in Washington on Sept. 3, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
DHS officials, including Mayorkas, on Sept. 24 said that the encampment under the bridge was cleared out. A day later, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that the Texas border crossing will be partially reopened.
The agency also said it is planning to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some progressive groups.
The number of people at the Del Rio encampment peaked last weekend as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing. While Mayorkas and other White House officials have asserted that the border is closed, Republicans have said that the administration’s decisions to rescind a number of Trump-era immigrant orders have triggered a surge of illegal immigration.
All the while, Mayorkas and other senior officials have dedicated a significant amount of time in news conferences condemning some Border Patrol agents who were seen on horseback near Haitians who illegally crossed the border. The photographer who shot those pictures last week said that the agents were not whipping the migrants, as some officials and Democratic lawmakers had claimed.
“Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses,” photographer Paul Ratje told local station KTSM, explaining the situation on the ground.
“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” he said, referring to the agents. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/dhs-secretary-as-many-as-12000-illegal-haitian-immigrants-released-into-the-us-in-recent-days_4015864.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-09-26-1&mktids=8414d0efe24889bbb5b5a3a49b944798&est=THasS4icn21SrLdI6CNwhij6huv925eLZfnWMG2RpzckCT1kZDXJUZu%2B
Biden Spending $3 Million Per Day to Not Build Border Wall
Report finds as much as $2 Billion wasted since inauguration
By Robert Law on July 27, 2021
On President Biden’s first day in office, he issued a memorandum blocking new border wall construction, including money appropriated by Congress for that purpose as well as Department of Defense (DOD) funds the Trump administration reprogrammed (reallocated) for border wall construction. Biden’s January 20 memorandum ordered a 60-day review of the border wall construction contracts and recommendations, but over 180 days later the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to satisfy that directive.
Almost immediately, the Biden administration’s inability or unwillingness to secure the border and enforce U.S immigration law led to a historic, and worsening, crisis at the southern border. But, with Democrats in charge of both chambers of Congress, there has been no oversight of the Biden administration’s mishandling of the situation. Unable to haul DHS administration officials before a hearing to hold them accountable, the Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, took it upon themselves to investigate the effect of President Biden’s policy halting border wall construction.
According to the report, titled "President Biden is Wasting Billions by Not Building the Border Wall", subcommittee Ranking Member James Lankford finds that between $1.837 billion and $2.087 billion of taxpayer dollars have been wasted since Biden’s inauguration, and that this fiscal drain increases by at least $3 million per day. Lankford notes that at the end of the Trump administration, approximately $10 billion had been transferred to two Department of Defense accounts for border wall construction and related projects, known as DOD 2802 Accounts and DOD 284 Accounts. Based on interactions with DOD employees, the GOP learned that DOD 2802 accounts fund military construction projects and that there were seven border wall-related projects suspended by President Biden. Initially, the suspension resulted in $6 million a day in taxpayer waste, but after laying off some contractors the waste is down to $3 million a day. As explained in the report, “the Federal government is paying contractors on these seven projects $3 million per day to drive out to project sites and guard the unused pallets of steel and other construction materials.” Lankford estimates that between January 20 and July 15, DOD has paid the contracts between $618 and $708 million to babysit materials, and that it will take from 12 to 18 months to terminate the contracts. Citing government statements from pending litigation, the DOD 2802 funds wasted will total between $798 million and $1.048 billion by the end of the calendar year.
The waste of taxpayer dollars is similarly astonishing for the mismanagement of the DOD 284 accounts, which fund counter-drug and counternarcotic activities. For these accounts, DOD estimates that at least $624 million will be spent in contract claims and termination costs plus an additional $415 million in suspension costs. Like the DOD 2802 accounts, it will take between 12 and 18 months to terminate the projects. From the same litigation referenced above, DOD pegs the total cost of suspension and termination costs for projects funded by DOD 284 accounts at $1.039 billion.
The money wasted on not building the border wall is just one aspect of the Biden border crisis draining taxpayer resources. Not covered in the GOP report are the costs of DHS housing and caring for illegal aliens temporarily detained after being apprehended at the southern border. Similarly uncaptured, but highly relevant to the big picture impact, are the taxpayer costs incurred by these illegal alien economic migrants accessing public services like healthcare facilities and schools, as well as those who take jobs from Americans, either by working unlawfully or with a work permit doled out under lax Biden administration policies.
https://cis.org/Law/Biden-Spending-3-Million-Day-Not-Build-Border-Wall
Report finds as much as $2 Billion wasted since inauguration
By Robert Law on July 27, 2021
On President Biden’s first day in office, he issued a memorandum blocking new border wall construction, including money appropriated by Congress for that purpose as well as Department of Defense (DOD) funds the Trump administration reprogrammed (reallocated) for border wall construction. Biden’s January 20 memorandum ordered a 60-day review of the border wall construction contracts and recommendations, but over 180 days later the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to satisfy that directive.
Almost immediately, the Biden administration’s inability or unwillingness to secure the border and enforce U.S immigration law led to a historic, and worsening, crisis at the southern border. But, with Democrats in charge of both chambers of Congress, there has been no oversight of the Biden administration’s mishandling of the situation. Unable to haul DHS administration officials before a hearing to hold them accountable, the Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, took it upon themselves to investigate the effect of President Biden’s policy halting border wall construction.
According to the report, titled "President Biden is Wasting Billions by Not Building the Border Wall", subcommittee Ranking Member James Lankford finds that between $1.837 billion and $2.087 billion of taxpayer dollars have been wasted since Biden’s inauguration, and that this fiscal drain increases by at least $3 million per day. Lankford notes that at the end of the Trump administration, approximately $10 billion had been transferred to two Department of Defense accounts for border wall construction and related projects, known as DOD 2802 Accounts and DOD 284 Accounts. Based on interactions with DOD employees, the GOP learned that DOD 2802 accounts fund military construction projects and that there were seven border wall-related projects suspended by President Biden. Initially, the suspension resulted in $6 million a day in taxpayer waste, but after laying off some contractors the waste is down to $3 million a day. As explained in the report, “the Federal government is paying contractors on these seven projects $3 million per day to drive out to project sites and guard the unused pallets of steel and other construction materials.” Lankford estimates that between January 20 and July 15, DOD has paid the contracts between $618 and $708 million to babysit materials, and that it will take from 12 to 18 months to terminate the contracts. Citing government statements from pending litigation, the DOD 2802 funds wasted will total between $798 million and $1.048 billion by the end of the calendar year.
The waste of taxpayer dollars is similarly astonishing for the mismanagement of the DOD 284 accounts, which fund counter-drug and counternarcotic activities. For these accounts, DOD estimates that at least $624 million will be spent in contract claims and termination costs plus an additional $415 million in suspension costs. Like the DOD 2802 accounts, it will take between 12 and 18 months to terminate the projects. From the same litigation referenced above, DOD pegs the total cost of suspension and termination costs for projects funded by DOD 284 accounts at $1.039 billion.
The money wasted on not building the border wall is just one aspect of the Biden border crisis draining taxpayer resources. Not covered in the GOP report are the costs of DHS housing and caring for illegal aliens temporarily detained after being apprehended at the southern border. Similarly uncaptured, but highly relevant to the big picture impact, are the taxpayer costs incurred by these illegal alien economic migrants accessing public services like healthcare facilities and schools, as well as those who take jobs from Americans, either by working unlawfully or with a work permit doled out under lax Biden administration policies.
https://cis.org/Law/Biden-Spending-3-Million-Day-Not-Build-Border-Wall
Biden playing a deadly game using secret flights to move migrants
By Post Editorial Board
October 18, 2021 9:41pm Updated
Miranda Devine on the 'secret' late-night flights to New York carrying underage migrants
0:21 /2:47
There’s a reason the Biden administration is using secret flights to small airports to move unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the border.
They don’t want voters to know just how many people are being waved right into the country, because President Biden understands that open borders might be the policy of progressives, but it’s not popular among the majority of Americans.
But you know who does realize these flights are happening? The people of Central and South America. Word travels fast that no one is getting deported, and that’s why they are paying money to smugglers to take their children on a perilous journey north.
That’s why there are so many heartbreaking images of toddlers literally being dropped over the wall, abandoned in the wilderness.
There were a staggering 18,958 encounters between the Border Patrol and unaccompanied children in July. In August, the figure was 18,847.
That’s up 655.6 percent from the previous year.
Sometimes, these kids are placed with relatives already in the United States. Sometimes, they are placed with aid groups happy to help.
Of course there is sympathy for parents so desperate for their children to have a better life that they have a 7-year-old walk to America.
The Biden administration has been allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country instead of deporting them.
Christopher Sadowski
But by not having a set policy, by not forcing people to apply for a visa from the country they live in, you are making a mockery of our immigration laws.
You are also encouraging a terrible, dangerous pipeline: How many children will be assaulted or die trying to get here?
Migrants seen after getting off a plane in Westchester.
Migrants seen after getting off a plane in Westchester.
Christopher Sadowski
Biden is trying to have it both ways: He can tell progressives that he’s let in the vast majority of migrants.
But he’s also hiding it from the public in hopes of not paying a political price. It’s cynical, and it’s wrong.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/biden-playing-deadly-game-using-secret-flights-to-move-migrants/
By Post Editorial Board
October 18, 2021 9:41pm Updated
Miranda Devine on the 'secret' late-night flights to New York carrying underage migrants
0:21 /2:47
There’s a reason the Biden administration is using secret flights to small airports to move unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the border.
They don’t want voters to know just how many people are being waved right into the country, because President Biden understands that open borders might be the policy of progressives, but it’s not popular among the majority of Americans.
But you know who does realize these flights are happening? The people of Central and South America. Word travels fast that no one is getting deported, and that’s why they are paying money to smugglers to take their children on a perilous journey north.
That’s why there are so many heartbreaking images of toddlers literally being dropped over the wall, abandoned in the wilderness.
There were a staggering 18,958 encounters between the Border Patrol and unaccompanied children in July. In August, the figure was 18,847.
That’s up 655.6 percent from the previous year.
Sometimes, these kids are placed with relatives already in the United States. Sometimes, they are placed with aid groups happy to help.
Of course there is sympathy for parents so desperate for their children to have a better life that they have a 7-year-old walk to America.
The Biden administration has been allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country instead of deporting them.
Christopher Sadowski
But by not having a set policy, by not forcing people to apply for a visa from the country they live in, you are making a mockery of our immigration laws.
You are also encouraging a terrible, dangerous pipeline: How many children will be assaulted or die trying to get here?
Migrants seen after getting off a plane in Westchester.
Migrants seen after getting off a plane in Westchester.
Christopher Sadowski
Biden is trying to have it both ways: He can tell progressives that he’s let in the vast majority of migrants.
But he’s also hiding it from the public in hopes of not paying a political price. It’s cynical, and it’s wrong.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/biden-playing-deadly-game-using-secret-flights-to-move-migrants/
tnshootist
New member
Wonder how much of that stuff says made in china on it.
Buy from china and let it sit and rot.
Lose lose.
Sounds about right.
Buy from china and let it sit and rot.
Lose lose.
Sounds about right.
Hello! Anybody home in DC? Nah, I didn't think so, and the crisis continues.
A Border Patrol agent picks up three illegal aliens after Texas state troopers arrested two U.S. citizen smugglers who were transporting them to San Antonio, in Kinney County,
Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Immigration & Border Security
Arrests of Illegal Immigrants at US–Mexico Border Set New October Record
By Zachary Stieber and Charlotte Cuthbertson
November 10, 2021 Updated: November 10, 2021
Apprehensions along the U.S.–Mexico border in October set a new record for the month, unpublished data obtained by The Epoch Times show.
Border Patrol logged about 163,000 arrests of illegal immigrants at the northern and southern borders(emphasis added), according to preliminary data that doesn’t include Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations (OFO). While arrests at the U.S.–Canadian border are typically less than 100 each month, the OFO has recently recorded at least 5,096 arrests per month.
While the total apprehensions are down from the previous month, they established a new record for October, easily clearing the 91,410 arrests recorded in October of 1999 and well above the figures seen during recent administrations.
“It’s an improvement, but it’s still four or five times the level that we saw during the Obama or Trump administrations,” Steven Kopits, president of the Princeton Policy Advisors, told The Epoch Times.
Arrests under former President Donald Trump averaged 45,000 per October and arrests under former President Barack Obama averaged 33,000 per October.
The new October record isn’t the only one set by the Biden administration. The arrests last month mean the administration has presided over the year with the most arrests, with two months still left to go.
For the full year, Princeton Policy’s forecast stands at 1.87 million apprehensions, up from the prior record of 1.61 million set under the Clinton administration in 2000.(emphasis added)
Most of the October apprehensions took place in the always-busy Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector in Texas. But agents in other areas also made significant arrests, with the number breaching 22,400 in the Yuma, Arizona, sector.
Illegal border crossings have exploded since President Joe Biden took office in January. The Democrat quickly reversed or altered key Trump-era border security and enforcement policies, including halting the construction of the border wall and stopping the “Remain in Mexico” program. The administration also ended the expulsion of many illegal immigrants despite the COVID-19 pandemic and released hundreds of thousands into the U.S. interior, some without official papers to appear in court.
The Biden administration, which has called Trump-era policies “inhumane” and “cruel,” has said its immigration system overhaul will take time to complete.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped in March to address the border issue and has said her focus is on the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has said the agency’s three-part plan is to invest in countries that people are leaving, to build “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” for immigration, and rebuild the asylum system and refugee program.
Epoch Times Photo
Thousands of illegal immigrants amass in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Scores of illegal immigrants have said they’ve traveled to the United States because of Biden’s policies. Mexico’s government also appears to have become more lenient with illegal immigrants transiting through since Biden took office.
Many Haitians who crossed into a primitive camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, recently told The Epoch Times that now was the time to come because it was easier to get in and stay in under Biden. The majority had been living in Chile or Brazil for years.
In addition to the apprehensions in October, there were roughly 50,000 “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who were recorded as evading arrest, according to the unpublished data. An untold number of other illegal immigrants enter the country without being arrested or recorded as having gotten away.
“Those gotaway numbers are higher than I’d have expected—they’re equivalent to 30 percent of apprehensions,” Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The decline in arrests from September may stem from a decrease in the number of U.S. job openings, Kopits said.
“There are a number of factors. One is that you may be running out of migrants right now—the number of people who wanted to come. It could just be a monthly blip, that happens sometimes. It could be the enforcement’s a little bit better than it was. Or it could be that the job market’s a little softer,” he said. “There’s a little bit less opportunity for migrants and so they’re slowing down a little bit.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated when the Biden administration would set a new yearly record. It already has. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/arrests-of-illegal-immigrants-at-us-mexico-border-set-new-october-record_4096799.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-11-11&mktids=7de942b41a46142848fe6961b8eebbec&est=TK7DlnREV9k1glhFb32eTCEVAfV9k%2BkxPEhp4j2bEAQ1T%2Bo%2B7wQ7ZMmg
Current administration believes in the the trickle down principle.....don't take action; let the responsibility trickle down. Texas has appropriated a billion dollars to do your job for you and even local governments are kicking in. Gov. Abbott has begun building a wall to fill in blanks left by Biden's cancellation of the border wall (at great expense to taxpayers). The governor announced that a fund has been established where donations to build the wall may be made. Apparently many citizens disagree with the administration's opinion that "there is no crisis on the border", base on over $54,000,000 which has already been donated!
And then there's this!
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith in his office in Brackettville, Texas, on Oct. 29, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
In Pursuit of a Secure Border: Small Texas County Leads Charge Against Border Crime
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
November 11, 2021 Updated: November 11, 2021
KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Charging an illegal immigrant with a misdemeanor such as criminal trespass sounds simple enough.
But throw 1,008 cases at a small county with a jail that has 14 spaces and a court system that usually handles six or seven cases per month—using Microsoft Word—and the wheels start to fall off.
On June 10, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed state troopers to start arresting illegal aliens—on charges including trespass, criminal mischief, and evading on foot—officials in Kinney County jumped on the idea.
County Sheriff Brad Coe was keen to stick illegal immigrants with any charges he could to deter them from coming to his county.
“We’re going to try to hold these people accountable,” Coe said. He also wanted to get them in the system because the illegal aliens captured in Kinney County have evaded Border Patrol, so they’re unknown.
Since January, ranchers and local law enforcement had seen an unprecedented increase in the number of illegal aliens traversing the county, and they’d given up on expecting federal solutions. Local ranchers, tired of cut fences and property damage, signed affidavits allowing the sheriff and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to press charges on their behalf.
Although Abbott announced the Operation Lone Star border security initiative in June, it took almost two months to secure enough jail space and for the DPS to work out the process. The state set up a temporary 100-bed detention center in neighboring Val Verde County and cleared out the 1,000-bed Briscoe Unit in Dilley.
Meanwhile, in July, almost 10,000 illegal aliens evaded Border Patrol in the Del Rio Sector, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection numbers.
By August, DPS was ready to start the initiative in Val Verde and Kinney counties. In Kinney, DPS assigned a small team to work the brush near the U.S.–Mexico border in areas of high foot traffic. The officers quickly started arresting an average of 25 illegal aliens per day from private ranches, often at night.
At the sheriff’s office, state troopers and local jail staff took about two hours to complete the paperwork and magistrate seven Mexicans who were arrested late on Aug. 7. They’d been walking for two days before being caught on a ranch.
said they had already tried crossing a month ago but got caught by Border Patrol and expelled. Another man, who said he was aiming to get to New York, said this was his third time trying to get through. He said his cousin intended to pay the $4,000 smuggling fee upon his delivery to New York.
Several said they’ll probably try again, while others weren’t as enthusiastic. They all said a “travel agent” on the Mexican side of the border directed them on where to cross, gave directions of where to walk, and had planned to coordinate a vehicle pick-up for them.
At first, Kinney County Justice of the Peace Narce Villarreal came down to the sheriff’s office in the middle of the night to magistrate the groups before DPS transported them the 30 miles to the Val Verde facility. But the hours became untenable and the sheriff’s office parking lot was overwhelmed with detainees, so the whole process was moved to Val Verde.
From Val Verde, the illegal aliens would eventually be transported 126 miles to the Briscoe Unit in Dilley while they waited for their court hearing. Subsequently, some were then transported another 200 miles to the Segovia jail facility in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile, Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith was scrambling to take up the flood of new cases. He had started the job in January and was building the backend process on the fly. He had to go to the county commissioners to request a software system that would streamline the paperwork on the cases—Word documents had become too unwieldy under the volume. He contacted two other county attorneys to double-check that his complaints were solid.
Smith said he’s filed around 900 charges for criminal trespass since August, with more pending, and has had to rely heavily on Mason District Attorney Tonya Ahlschwede, who is part of Texas’s border prosecution unit, to keep up.
Former chief of the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Austin Skero, who retired at the end of July, also joined the unit as an investigator.
After a misdemeanor arrest, Smith examines the evidence in the case file from the sheriff’s office or DPS. If it’s determined that trespass occurred, he’ll file a complaint against the individual for trespassing, which is a Class B misdemeanor. The charge is elevated if the individual has a deadly weapon, is found more than 100 feet past the property line on agricultural land, or if the alleged crime took place during a disaster (the county has been in a perpetual state of disaster since April).
Once charged, the suspect will make a plea, and if he pleads guilty, he’ll most likely get time served and be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
It’s not a hefty penalty, but “we’re hoping they avoid our county,” Smith said.
The maximum punishment for a Class B misdemeanor in Texas is 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, whereas a Class A is one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
As the cases have piled up, it has become a race against time for Smith.
“If they don’t make bail, they’re in jail the whole time until trial,” he said. From the time of the arrest, he has 30 days to file a Class A misdemeanor complaint against a detained individual before the habeas corpus statute requires a personal recognizance (PR) bond to be set and the individual released.
In some cases, Smith received the arrest files from DPS on day 29, or even beyond day 30. In other cases, the complaints were filed within the 30 days, but the inmate had bonded out of jail and was nowhere to be found.
Logistics and lack of manpower were the bottlenecks, he said.
“Because what the state did, when they planned on this process, they got the jails set up, they got defense attorneys funded, but not one prosecutor was there to get the prosecution set up for this,” he said.
“So we’re playing catch up, trying to get the resources at the same time to do everything—versus the defense had everything set up from the very beginning.”
On Oct. 14, Abbott announced $36.4 million in grant funding toward border prosecutions and 12 border counties, including more than $3.1 million in grant money to Kinney County, as part of Operation Lone Star.
But the money doesn’t just appear in the county bank account. It’s grant money that requires an application process, and the county must carry the costs in the meantime.
Smith has already spent more than his annual office supplies budget (about $1,200) on file folders for the trespass cases.
Court Proceedings
The first of Kinney County’s cases came up on the court docket during the last week of October. They were conducted over video conference with retired judges coming in to fill the gaps.
On Oct. 26, Judge Vivian Torres sat on the virtual bench. The cases proceeded slowly, with frequent pauses for the translator to ensure the defendant understood the goings-on.
Defense lawyer Sylvia Delgado had arranged a plea deal for several defendants that reduced their charge from a Class A to a Class B misdemeanor and a sentence of “time served,” with court costs being waived.
The defendants pleaded guilty, and the judge agreed to the plea deal terms, which included a 72-day sentence, which had been served.
Delgado said she’s been assigned about 190 cases so far by the Lubbock Public Defenders’ Office and has been focusing on getting the first ones out of jail because they’d been detained so long.
She said she meets her clients via Zoom video conference. “And I tell them specifically: ‘You have not been forgotten. I’m your attorney, I’m going to work to get you out,'” Delgado told The Epoch Times on Oct. 28.
Delgado said she lets them know that she’ll attempt to get them released on a no-fee PR bond, try to get charges reduced, and, if they want to plead guilty, ask for time served.
“And then, unfortunately, when I go back to see them before docket, a lot of them are gone,” she said. Of her 18 clients for the Nov. 2 court docket, she has only been able to follow up with the six who are still in jail.
“I met with Joselito, and Joselito had told me, ‘Well, Ms. Delgado, I just want to plead guilty and get sent back to Mexico. I just want to go back to Mexico.’
“So I was looking for Joselito. And he’s nowhere to be found.”
She was told by the other inmates that Joselito was transferred to ICE, while others had returned to Mexico after bonding out.
Other defense attorneys have also said they had no idea where their clients were after they bonded out.
The region’s district attorney, Suzanne West, told The Epoch Times that she believes inmates who bond out are released to ICE.
ICE didn’t confirm that it was taking custody of the inmates, or what happened next. A spokesperson said the agency is following the enforcement priorities set out by the Biden administration.
“In Texas and elsewhere, ICE conducts an individualized determination in each case to assess whether arrest and removal is warranted. This determination includes an assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors, as well as a determination of whether the person is removable under the law,” ICE spokesperson Monica Yoas stated in an email to The Epoch Times.
“ICE fully respects the civil rights and liberties of all people when conducting this assessment.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates the Briscoe and Segovia jails, said that as of Oct. 29, the Briscoe unit held 654 illegal alien inmates, with 536 from Kinney County, 105 from Val Verde, 10 from Zavala, and three from Frio County. In Segovia, all 291 illegal alien inmates are from Kinney County.
Delgado said she has asked for an investigator to help on the ground to find the missing people and has meanwhile obtained a continuance in court for their hearing dates.
“If they’re truly lost, like we don’t ever hear from them again, we don’t know what happened. If I can’t really find out, then they’re probably just going to keep getting reset,” she said.
“So I suppose a warrant may issue, but we’re not there yet. We’re just not there in that system yet.”
Most of the defendants on the next several dockets, totaling about 60 cases, had their cases dismissed because defense lawyers argued that the complaints were deficient as they lacked the landowner’s name.
Smith later said he was disappointed that the name of the ranch wasn’t sufficient for the court, as he was hoping to avoid naming the landowner in public records. The landowner’s name is usually included in the arrest file, which the lawyer can access.
“A lot of ranchers are concerned about cartel retribution, possibly, if their name comes up in complaint after complaint after complaint” he said.
“So we can still refile it and prosecute once we correct that information. But you know, they’re not going to show up.”
Smith’s office scrambled to amend the 900 complaints already filed to include the landowner name and the GPS location of the alleged offense.
Defense lawyers appeared to change tack on the Nov. 2 docket and entered “not guilty” pleas for all their clients who were still present.
The judge subsequently ordered the release of each defendant on a no-fee PR bond and set a pre-trial hearing for Nov. 18.
Ahlschwede, from the border prosecution unit, told the court on Nov. 2 that several illegal aliens who had been released from jail after paying a cash bond have since been arrested again for criminal trespass in Kinney County.
Smith said one man was released after paying a $4,000 cash bond. “Then we re-arrested him 10 days ago. And despite it being a multiple offense, they gave a $500 bond. Well, we filed the motion to revoke [the bond] once we got the case file—which was 10 days after it occurred,” Smith said.
The man had been released three days prior to receiving the motion.
“By the time we got the file, he was already gone. Who knows where he’s at now,” Smith said.
Coe said his office has been juggling a steady stream of people coming in to pay cash bonds with wads of crisp $100 bills.
“Some of them are $5,000. Where are they getting the money?” he said. At one point, he had more than half a million dollars in cash sitting in his vault.
“I’d bet there’s a 99 percent chance that they don’t show up [to court],” Coe said of the released illegal alien defendants.
“They’ll probably end up in places like Michigan, Missouri, West Virginia, Washington—we’ll never see them again. So are we doing this all in vain? I mean, it’s doable. It’s very, very new. It’s just getting the mechanism rolling.”
Coe said he hoped the convictions might be a roadblock for illegal aliens if they ever tried to file for some type of assistance or become U.S. citizens.
“That’d be a check mark against them. Some type of consequence has to be there,” he said.
However, in reality, having a trespass conviction on record will act more like a speedbump, according to former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who is now a resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Generally, this isn’t going to have any effect on them from an immigration standpoint, but again, sleeping in a room with 30 guys for six months really does have a way of concentrating one’s attention,” Arthur told The Epoch Times on Oct. 27.
Even if the Texas legislature passes a bill that would enhance punishment to a third-degree felony for illegal alien trespassers, the impact on future immigration status would be negligible, Arthur said.
“But again, anything that impedes people’s ability to enter the United States, anything that’s going to require them to be detained pretrial, or imprisoned post-trial, is going to be a deterrent,” he said.
“Now, how strong a deterrent effect that is remains to be seen.”
Arthur said the deterrent effect was worth the taxpayer dollars spent on the trespass prosecutions.
“The problem is that Texas is doing the job that the federal government should be doing.”
The majority of Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border occur in Texas. Of the more than 1.6 million illegal alien apprehensions in fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol apprehended almost 958,000, or 58 percent, crossing into Texas.
Customs and Border Protection doesn’t publish the number of illegal aliens that Border Patrol agents have detected but who subsequently evade apprehension, but the internal numbers have sat at around 50,000 per month this year, according to an inside source. It’s impossible to estimate the number of those who aren’t detected at all.
Within the Operation Lone Star border effort, the DPS had made 7,744 criminal arrests as of Oct. 14, including 1,300 for criminal trespass and 6,339 on felony charges. State troopers had been involved in 822 vehicle pursuits, mostly chasing smugglers who were transporting illegal aliens.
Kinney County has charged significantly more illegal aliens with trespass than Val Verde County so far, which started the initiative at the same time. Other counties, such as Frio and Zavala started prosecuting more recently, while Uvalde and Brooks counties are considering getting started but are strapped with the same lack of resources that Kinney County has experienced.
Smith said the volume of prosecutions coming from Kinney County were a result of the county officials caring about the issue.
“They want to do something more about it than just close your eyes and not watch what’s happening to your county,” he said.
Smith said he’s been accused by a defense lawyer of being racist for prosecuting illegal aliens.
“The criminal complaints make no mention of immigration status or hinge on race. If you come down to Kinney County and trespass on private property, we’ll arrest you too,” he said in a statement on Oct. 26.
Delgado, the defense lawyer, said she hadn’t seen any malfeasance, despite the scramble to pull everything together.
“It’s a big ship and it’s making a large turn in a small canal. And so we are all working really hard to get things moving. And I believe it is starting to unclog,” she said.
Smith predicted that the system will be much more robust within a couple of months.
“What we’re working on right now is tweaking the language of the complaints, researching everything, making sure there’s nothing else they [the defense] can pick at,” he said.
“Now, will this Operation Lone Star continue for the next three years? Probably so. Unless the federal government decides to actually follow the laws passed by Congress—which at the moment they’re not doing.
“The only realistic solution to this crisis will require deploying all of the Texas military on the border and actually prevent the illegal entries from occurring. Right now, it’s like trying to build a dam after the flood gates have already been opened.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/in-pursuit-of-a-secure-border-small-texas-county-leads-charge-against-border-crime_4084276.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-11-12&mktids=24ab40685045db9190eb15406814df98&est=u0JDb1DwRutKOO9Ly%2BaGYQQ%2F3ERCHQd74KLvDUKlXlXvqxAx%2BAO91Tpz
A Border Patrol agent picks up three illegal aliens after Texas state troopers arrested two U.S. citizen smugglers who were transporting them to San Antonio, in Kinney County,
Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Immigration & Border Security
Arrests of Illegal Immigrants at US–Mexico Border Set New October Record
By Zachary Stieber and Charlotte Cuthbertson
November 10, 2021 Updated: November 10, 2021
Apprehensions along the U.S.–Mexico border in October set a new record for the month, unpublished data obtained by The Epoch Times show.
Border Patrol logged about 163,000 arrests of illegal immigrants at the northern and southern borders(emphasis added), according to preliminary data that doesn’t include Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations (OFO). While arrests at the U.S.–Canadian border are typically less than 100 each month, the OFO has recently recorded at least 5,096 arrests per month.
While the total apprehensions are down from the previous month, they established a new record for October, easily clearing the 91,410 arrests recorded in October of 1999 and well above the figures seen during recent administrations.
“It’s an improvement, but it’s still four or five times the level that we saw during the Obama or Trump administrations,” Steven Kopits, president of the Princeton Policy Advisors, told The Epoch Times.
Arrests under former President Donald Trump averaged 45,000 per October and arrests under former President Barack Obama averaged 33,000 per October.
The new October record isn’t the only one set by the Biden administration. The arrests last month mean the administration has presided over the year with the most arrests, with two months still left to go.
For the full year, Princeton Policy’s forecast stands at 1.87 million apprehensions, up from the prior record of 1.61 million set under the Clinton administration in 2000.(emphasis added)
Most of the October apprehensions took place in the always-busy Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector in Texas. But agents in other areas also made significant arrests, with the number breaching 22,400 in the Yuma, Arizona, sector.
Illegal border crossings have exploded since President Joe Biden took office in January. The Democrat quickly reversed or altered key Trump-era border security and enforcement policies, including halting the construction of the border wall and stopping the “Remain in Mexico” program. The administration also ended the expulsion of many illegal immigrants despite the COVID-19 pandemic and released hundreds of thousands into the U.S. interior, some without official papers to appear in court.
The Biden administration, which has called Trump-era policies “inhumane” and “cruel,” has said its immigration system overhaul will take time to complete.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped in March to address the border issue and has said her focus is on the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has said the agency’s three-part plan is to invest in countries that people are leaving, to build “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” for immigration, and rebuild the asylum system and refugee program.
Epoch Times Photo
Thousands of illegal immigrants amass in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Scores of illegal immigrants have said they’ve traveled to the United States because of Biden’s policies. Mexico’s government also appears to have become more lenient with illegal immigrants transiting through since Biden took office.
Many Haitians who crossed into a primitive camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, recently told The Epoch Times that now was the time to come because it was easier to get in and stay in under Biden. The majority had been living in Chile or Brazil for years.
In addition to the apprehensions in October, there were roughly 50,000 “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who were recorded as evading arrest, according to the unpublished data. An untold number of other illegal immigrants enter the country without being arrested or recorded as having gotten away.
“Those gotaway numbers are higher than I’d have expected—they’re equivalent to 30 percent of apprehensions,” Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The decline in arrests from September may stem from a decrease in the number of U.S. job openings, Kopits said.
“There are a number of factors. One is that you may be running out of migrants right now—the number of people who wanted to come. It could just be a monthly blip, that happens sometimes. It could be the enforcement’s a little bit better than it was. Or it could be that the job market’s a little softer,” he said. “There’s a little bit less opportunity for migrants and so they’re slowing down a little bit.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated when the Biden administration would set a new yearly record. It already has. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/arrests-of-illegal-immigrants-at-us-mexico-border-set-new-october-record_4096799.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-11-11&mktids=7de942b41a46142848fe6961b8eebbec&est=TK7DlnREV9k1glhFb32eTCEVAfV9k%2BkxPEhp4j2bEAQ1T%2Bo%2B7wQ7ZMmg
Current administration believes in the the trickle down principle.....don't take action; let the responsibility trickle down. Texas has appropriated a billion dollars to do your job for you and even local governments are kicking in. Gov. Abbott has begun building a wall to fill in blanks left by Biden's cancellation of the border wall (at great expense to taxpayers). The governor announced that a fund has been established where donations to build the wall may be made. Apparently many citizens disagree with the administration's opinion that "there is no crisis on the border", base on over $54,000,000 which has already been donated!
And then there's this!
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith in his office in Brackettville, Texas, on Oct. 29, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
In Pursuit of a Secure Border: Small Texas County Leads Charge Against Border Crime
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
November 11, 2021 Updated: November 11, 2021
KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Charging an illegal immigrant with a misdemeanor such as criminal trespass sounds simple enough.
But throw 1,008 cases at a small county with a jail that has 14 spaces and a court system that usually handles six or seven cases per month—using Microsoft Word—and the wheels start to fall off.
On June 10, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed state troopers to start arresting illegal aliens—on charges including trespass, criminal mischief, and evading on foot—officials in Kinney County jumped on the idea.
County Sheriff Brad Coe was keen to stick illegal immigrants with any charges he could to deter them from coming to his county.
“We’re going to try to hold these people accountable,” Coe said. He also wanted to get them in the system because the illegal aliens captured in Kinney County have evaded Border Patrol, so they’re unknown.
Since January, ranchers and local law enforcement had seen an unprecedented increase in the number of illegal aliens traversing the county, and they’d given up on expecting federal solutions. Local ranchers, tired of cut fences and property damage, signed affidavits allowing the sheriff and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to press charges on their behalf.
Although Abbott announced the Operation Lone Star border security initiative in June, it took almost two months to secure enough jail space and for the DPS to work out the process. The state set up a temporary 100-bed detention center in neighboring Val Verde County and cleared out the 1,000-bed Briscoe Unit in Dilley.
Meanwhile, in July, almost 10,000 illegal aliens evaded Border Patrol in the Del Rio Sector, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection numbers.
By August, DPS was ready to start the initiative in Val Verde and Kinney counties. In Kinney, DPS assigned a small team to work the brush near the U.S.–Mexico border in areas of high foot traffic. The officers quickly started arresting an average of 25 illegal aliens per day from private ranches, often at night.
At the sheriff’s office, state troopers and local jail staff took about two hours to complete the paperwork and magistrate seven Mexicans who were arrested late on Aug. 7. They’d been walking for two days before being caught on a ranch.
said they had already tried crossing a month ago but got caught by Border Patrol and expelled. Another man, who said he was aiming to get to New York, said this was his third time trying to get through. He said his cousin intended to pay the $4,000 smuggling fee upon his delivery to New York.
Several said they’ll probably try again, while others weren’t as enthusiastic. They all said a “travel agent” on the Mexican side of the border directed them on where to cross, gave directions of where to walk, and had planned to coordinate a vehicle pick-up for them.
At first, Kinney County Justice of the Peace Narce Villarreal came down to the sheriff’s office in the middle of the night to magistrate the groups before DPS transported them the 30 miles to the Val Verde facility. But the hours became untenable and the sheriff’s office parking lot was overwhelmed with detainees, so the whole process was moved to Val Verde.
From Val Verde, the illegal aliens would eventually be transported 126 miles to the Briscoe Unit in Dilley while they waited for their court hearing. Subsequently, some were then transported another 200 miles to the Segovia jail facility in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile, Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith was scrambling to take up the flood of new cases. He had started the job in January and was building the backend process on the fly. He had to go to the county commissioners to request a software system that would streamline the paperwork on the cases—Word documents had become too unwieldy under the volume. He contacted two other county attorneys to double-check that his complaints were solid.
Smith said he’s filed around 900 charges for criminal trespass since August, with more pending, and has had to rely heavily on Mason District Attorney Tonya Ahlschwede, who is part of Texas’s border prosecution unit, to keep up.
Former chief of the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Austin Skero, who retired at the end of July, also joined the unit as an investigator.
After a misdemeanor arrest, Smith examines the evidence in the case file from the sheriff’s office or DPS. If it’s determined that trespass occurred, he’ll file a complaint against the individual for trespassing, which is a Class B misdemeanor. The charge is elevated if the individual has a deadly weapon, is found more than 100 feet past the property line on agricultural land, or if the alleged crime took place during a disaster (the county has been in a perpetual state of disaster since April).
Once charged, the suspect will make a plea, and if he pleads guilty, he’ll most likely get time served and be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
It’s not a hefty penalty, but “we’re hoping they avoid our county,” Smith said.
The maximum punishment for a Class B misdemeanor in Texas is 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, whereas a Class A is one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
As the cases have piled up, it has become a race against time for Smith.
“If they don’t make bail, they’re in jail the whole time until trial,” he said. From the time of the arrest, he has 30 days to file a Class A misdemeanor complaint against a detained individual before the habeas corpus statute requires a personal recognizance (PR) bond to be set and the individual released.
In some cases, Smith received the arrest files from DPS on day 29, or even beyond day 30. In other cases, the complaints were filed within the 30 days, but the inmate had bonded out of jail and was nowhere to be found.
Logistics and lack of manpower were the bottlenecks, he said.
“Because what the state did, when they planned on this process, they got the jails set up, they got defense attorneys funded, but not one prosecutor was there to get the prosecution set up for this,” he said.
“So we’re playing catch up, trying to get the resources at the same time to do everything—versus the defense had everything set up from the very beginning.”
On Oct. 14, Abbott announced $36.4 million in grant funding toward border prosecutions and 12 border counties, including more than $3.1 million in grant money to Kinney County, as part of Operation Lone Star.
But the money doesn’t just appear in the county bank account. It’s grant money that requires an application process, and the county must carry the costs in the meantime.
Smith has already spent more than his annual office supplies budget (about $1,200) on file folders for the trespass cases.
Court Proceedings
The first of Kinney County’s cases came up on the court docket during the last week of October. They were conducted over video conference with retired judges coming in to fill the gaps.
On Oct. 26, Judge Vivian Torres sat on the virtual bench. The cases proceeded slowly, with frequent pauses for the translator to ensure the defendant understood the goings-on.
Defense lawyer Sylvia Delgado had arranged a plea deal for several defendants that reduced their charge from a Class A to a Class B misdemeanor and a sentence of “time served,” with court costs being waived.
The defendants pleaded guilty, and the judge agreed to the plea deal terms, which included a 72-day sentence, which had been served.
Delgado said she’s been assigned about 190 cases so far by the Lubbock Public Defenders’ Office and has been focusing on getting the first ones out of jail because they’d been detained so long.
She said she meets her clients via Zoom video conference. “And I tell them specifically: ‘You have not been forgotten. I’m your attorney, I’m going to work to get you out,'” Delgado told The Epoch Times on Oct. 28.
Delgado said she lets them know that she’ll attempt to get them released on a no-fee PR bond, try to get charges reduced, and, if they want to plead guilty, ask for time served.
“And then, unfortunately, when I go back to see them before docket, a lot of them are gone,” she said. Of her 18 clients for the Nov. 2 court docket, she has only been able to follow up with the six who are still in jail.
“I met with Joselito, and Joselito had told me, ‘Well, Ms. Delgado, I just want to plead guilty and get sent back to Mexico. I just want to go back to Mexico.’
“So I was looking for Joselito. And he’s nowhere to be found.”
She was told by the other inmates that Joselito was transferred to ICE, while others had returned to Mexico after bonding out.
Other defense attorneys have also said they had no idea where their clients were after they bonded out.
The region’s district attorney, Suzanne West, told The Epoch Times that she believes inmates who bond out are released to ICE.
ICE didn’t confirm that it was taking custody of the inmates, or what happened next. A spokesperson said the agency is following the enforcement priorities set out by the Biden administration.
“In Texas and elsewhere, ICE conducts an individualized determination in each case to assess whether arrest and removal is warranted. This determination includes an assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors, as well as a determination of whether the person is removable under the law,” ICE spokesperson Monica Yoas stated in an email to The Epoch Times.
“ICE fully respects the civil rights and liberties of all people when conducting this assessment.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates the Briscoe and Segovia jails, said that as of Oct. 29, the Briscoe unit held 654 illegal alien inmates, with 536 from Kinney County, 105 from Val Verde, 10 from Zavala, and three from Frio County. In Segovia, all 291 illegal alien inmates are from Kinney County.
Delgado said she has asked for an investigator to help on the ground to find the missing people and has meanwhile obtained a continuance in court for their hearing dates.
“If they’re truly lost, like we don’t ever hear from them again, we don’t know what happened. If I can’t really find out, then they’re probably just going to keep getting reset,” she said.
“So I suppose a warrant may issue, but we’re not there yet. We’re just not there in that system yet.”
Most of the defendants on the next several dockets, totaling about 60 cases, had their cases dismissed because defense lawyers argued that the complaints were deficient as they lacked the landowner’s name.
Smith later said he was disappointed that the name of the ranch wasn’t sufficient for the court, as he was hoping to avoid naming the landowner in public records. The landowner’s name is usually included in the arrest file, which the lawyer can access.
“A lot of ranchers are concerned about cartel retribution, possibly, if their name comes up in complaint after complaint after complaint” he said.
“So we can still refile it and prosecute once we correct that information. But you know, they’re not going to show up.”
Smith’s office scrambled to amend the 900 complaints already filed to include the landowner name and the GPS location of the alleged offense.
Defense lawyers appeared to change tack on the Nov. 2 docket and entered “not guilty” pleas for all their clients who were still present.
The judge subsequently ordered the release of each defendant on a no-fee PR bond and set a pre-trial hearing for Nov. 18.
Ahlschwede, from the border prosecution unit, told the court on Nov. 2 that several illegal aliens who had been released from jail after paying a cash bond have since been arrested again for criminal trespass in Kinney County.
Smith said one man was released after paying a $4,000 cash bond. “Then we re-arrested him 10 days ago. And despite it being a multiple offense, they gave a $500 bond. Well, we filed the motion to revoke [the bond] once we got the case file—which was 10 days after it occurred,” Smith said.
The man had been released three days prior to receiving the motion.
“By the time we got the file, he was already gone. Who knows where he’s at now,” Smith said.
Coe said his office has been juggling a steady stream of people coming in to pay cash bonds with wads of crisp $100 bills.
“Some of them are $5,000. Where are they getting the money?” he said. At one point, he had more than half a million dollars in cash sitting in his vault.
“I’d bet there’s a 99 percent chance that they don’t show up [to court],” Coe said of the released illegal alien defendants.
“They’ll probably end up in places like Michigan, Missouri, West Virginia, Washington—we’ll never see them again. So are we doing this all in vain? I mean, it’s doable. It’s very, very new. It’s just getting the mechanism rolling.”
Coe said he hoped the convictions might be a roadblock for illegal aliens if they ever tried to file for some type of assistance or become U.S. citizens.
“That’d be a check mark against them. Some type of consequence has to be there,” he said.
However, in reality, having a trespass conviction on record will act more like a speedbump, according to former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who is now a resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Generally, this isn’t going to have any effect on them from an immigration standpoint, but again, sleeping in a room with 30 guys for six months really does have a way of concentrating one’s attention,” Arthur told The Epoch Times on Oct. 27.
Even if the Texas legislature passes a bill that would enhance punishment to a third-degree felony for illegal alien trespassers, the impact on future immigration status would be negligible, Arthur said.
“But again, anything that impedes people’s ability to enter the United States, anything that’s going to require them to be detained pretrial, or imprisoned post-trial, is going to be a deterrent,” he said.
“Now, how strong a deterrent effect that is remains to be seen.”
Arthur said the deterrent effect was worth the taxpayer dollars spent on the trespass prosecutions.
“The problem is that Texas is doing the job that the federal government should be doing.”
The majority of Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border occur in Texas. Of the more than 1.6 million illegal alien apprehensions in fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol apprehended almost 958,000, or 58 percent, crossing into Texas.
Customs and Border Protection doesn’t publish the number of illegal aliens that Border Patrol agents have detected but who subsequently evade apprehension, but the internal numbers have sat at around 50,000 per month this year, according to an inside source. It’s impossible to estimate the number of those who aren’t detected at all.
Within the Operation Lone Star border effort, the DPS had made 7,744 criminal arrests as of Oct. 14, including 1,300 for criminal trespass and 6,339 on felony charges. State troopers had been involved in 822 vehicle pursuits, mostly chasing smugglers who were transporting illegal aliens.
Kinney County has charged significantly more illegal aliens with trespass than Val Verde County so far, which started the initiative at the same time. Other counties, such as Frio and Zavala started prosecuting more recently, while Uvalde and Brooks counties are considering getting started but are strapped with the same lack of resources that Kinney County has experienced.
Smith said the volume of prosecutions coming from Kinney County were a result of the county officials caring about the issue.
“They want to do something more about it than just close your eyes and not watch what’s happening to your county,” he said.
Smith said he’s been accused by a defense lawyer of being racist for prosecuting illegal aliens.
“The criminal complaints make no mention of immigration status or hinge on race. If you come down to Kinney County and trespass on private property, we’ll arrest you too,” he said in a statement on Oct. 26.
Delgado, the defense lawyer, said she hadn’t seen any malfeasance, despite the scramble to pull everything together.
“It’s a big ship and it’s making a large turn in a small canal. And so we are all working really hard to get things moving. And I believe it is starting to unclog,” she said.
Smith predicted that the system will be much more robust within a couple of months.
“What we’re working on right now is tweaking the language of the complaints, researching everything, making sure there’s nothing else they [the defense] can pick at,” he said.
“Now, will this Operation Lone Star continue for the next three years? Probably so. Unless the federal government decides to actually follow the laws passed by Congress—which at the moment they’re not doing.
“The only realistic solution to this crisis will require deploying all of the Texas military on the border and actually prevent the illegal entries from occurring. Right now, it’s like trying to build a dam after the flood gates have already been opened.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/in-pursuit-of-a-secure-border-small-texas-county-leads-charge-against-border-crime_4084276.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-11-12&mktids=24ab40685045db9190eb15406814df98&est=u0JDb1DwRutKOO9Ly%2BaGYQQ%2F3ERCHQd74KLvDUKlXlXvqxAx%2BAO91Tpz
And then, there's this:
13 November 2021
According to Fox News this morning, things are heating up again on the Texas border, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.
Their reporter, stationed @ La Joya reports in the last 24 hours:
*1,909 illegal aliens were apprehended by CBP
*Four of which were identified as known MS 13 gang members
*Authorities preparing for a reported surge of 10,000 next week
*So far this year, 180 convicted sex offenders and 160 gang members have been apprehended in this sector.
Biden to meet with Mexican President Obredor on the 18th; the day that an estimated 11,000 caravan members are expected to arrive somewhere on the southern border.
CBP estimate 400,000 "getaways" have slipped through the area so far this year! A very large percentage of these are presumed to be previously convicted in the US or gang members who would face expulsion if caught, as opposed to family groups seeking assylum.
And then there's the estimated 15-20% infected with Covid.
13 November 2021
According to Fox News this morning, things are heating up again on the Texas border, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.
Their reporter, stationed @ La Joya reports in the last 24 hours:
*1,909 illegal aliens were apprehended by CBP
*Four of which were identified as known MS 13 gang members
*Authorities preparing for a reported surge of 10,000 next week
*So far this year, 180 convicted sex offenders and 160 gang members have been apprehended in this sector.
Biden to meet with Mexican President Obredor on the 18th; the day that an estimated 11,000 caravan members are expected to arrive somewhere on the southern border.
CBP estimate 400,000 "getaways" have slipped through the area so far this year! A very large percentage of these are presumed to be previously convicted in the US or gang members who would face expulsion if caught, as opposed to family groups seeking assylum.
And then there's the estimated 15-20% infected with Covid.
Can't help but wonder just how many FARC members are among the thousands of "getaways" evading capture at our southern "BORDER"? Outrageous!
Florida’s DeSantis Warns Against Removing Communist Rebels From Terrorist List: ‘A Serious Mistake’
By GQ Pan
November 25, 2021 Updated: November 26, 2021
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized the Biden administration over its reported plan to remove a Colombian communist rebel group from the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, calling it “an insult” to the Colombian American community in his state.
Financed by extortion, kidnapping, and a billion-dollar cocaine trafficking operation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) waged a guerrilla war against Colombian government for more than a half-century until 2016, when the far-left rebels signed a peace deal that’s still being implemented. The decades long conflict has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions more, including many families who settled in Florida.
In response to a recent report that the U.S. Department of State is planning to remove FARC from its international terrorist list, DeSantis called the move a “reckless decision,” noting that the group “perpetuated countless murders, bombings, assassinations, kidnapping and attacks” in the name of redistribution of wealth. (Emphasis added)
“Biden’s policy is an insult to members of the Colombian American community, many of whom fled that terrorist group’s barbaric attacks on civilians,” the Republican governor said. “This is a serious mistake by the Biden administration and will hurt Floridians.”
Epoch Times Photo
In this file photo taken in February 2001, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas guard the location of talks between Manuel Marulanda, Marxist rebel chief of the FARC, and then-Colombian President Andres Pastrana. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)
He also argued that the move could “embolden terrorist groups throughout Latin America,” empower narco-traffickers, and pave the way for a revival of left-wing authoritarian Castro-Chavezism in Colombia.
DeSantis’s criticism was echoed by U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in an attempt to unseat DeSantis as governor in 2022. The former-governor-turned-congressman said FARC has earned its designation as a terrorist group for causing “decades of war and death.”
“I join Colombians across Florida and our nation, deeply troubled by reports that the State Department is considering removing FARC from the list of international terrorist organizations,” Crist said in a statement. “It should not earn its legitimacy from the United States without the advice and consent from the community who call America home.”
Florida state Sen. Annette Taddeo, another 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, also spoke against the move. Taddeo, whose mother is Colombian, recalled on Twitter that she had to flee her home country at the age of 17 “because of the Marxist terrorist organization, FARC, a group of militias who kidnapped my father who was a WWII American fighter pilot.”
“This news is outrageous and I just hung up with the State Department to let them know just how outrageous it is,” she said.
During a Nov. 23 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the status of FARC and whether it’s being “delisted” as a terrorist group.
“I don’t have any update on that,” Psaki said. “I’m happy to check with our national security team and see if there’s anything we can get to all of you.”
The State Department has responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, saying that it has “provided Congress with notification of upcoming actions” it is taking with regard to the FARC, but has no further comment on those actions. FARC remains on the department’s international terrorist organizations list as of the time of publication.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/floridas-desantis-warns-against-removing-communist-rebels-from-terrorist-list-a-serious-mistake_4124214.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-25-2&mktids=63e9c7bff2058f2ec39b1faaa91cce76&est=DnRWtNvXzFjSA6u0GCIArS5uzNoMJEIEx4mSL0vHjsiz%2Fz5KhVQnnzIc
Florida’s DeSantis Warns Against Removing Communist Rebels From Terrorist List: ‘A Serious Mistake’
By GQ Pan
November 25, 2021 Updated: November 26, 2021
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized the Biden administration over its reported plan to remove a Colombian communist rebel group from the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, calling it “an insult” to the Colombian American community in his state.
Financed by extortion, kidnapping, and a billion-dollar cocaine trafficking operation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) waged a guerrilla war against Colombian government for more than a half-century until 2016, when the far-left rebels signed a peace deal that’s still being implemented. The decades long conflict has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions more, including many families who settled in Florida.
In response to a recent report that the U.S. Department of State is planning to remove FARC from its international terrorist list, DeSantis called the move a “reckless decision,” noting that the group “perpetuated countless murders, bombings, assassinations, kidnapping and attacks” in the name of redistribution of wealth. (Emphasis added)
“Biden’s policy is an insult to members of the Colombian American community, many of whom fled that terrorist group’s barbaric attacks on civilians,” the Republican governor said. “This is a serious mistake by the Biden administration and will hurt Floridians.”
Epoch Times Photo
In this file photo taken in February 2001, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas guard the location of talks between Manuel Marulanda, Marxist rebel chief of the FARC, and then-Colombian President Andres Pastrana. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)
He also argued that the move could “embolden terrorist groups throughout Latin America,” empower narco-traffickers, and pave the way for a revival of left-wing authoritarian Castro-Chavezism in Colombia.
DeSantis’s criticism was echoed by U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in an attempt to unseat DeSantis as governor in 2022. The former-governor-turned-congressman said FARC has earned its designation as a terrorist group for causing “decades of war and death.”
“I join Colombians across Florida and our nation, deeply troubled by reports that the State Department is considering removing FARC from the list of international terrorist organizations,” Crist said in a statement. “It should not earn its legitimacy from the United States without the advice and consent from the community who call America home.”
Florida state Sen. Annette Taddeo, another 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, also spoke against the move. Taddeo, whose mother is Colombian, recalled on Twitter that she had to flee her home country at the age of 17 “because of the Marxist terrorist organization, FARC, a group of militias who kidnapped my father who was a WWII American fighter pilot.”
“This news is outrageous and I just hung up with the State Department to let them know just how outrageous it is,” she said.
During a Nov. 23 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the status of FARC and whether it’s being “delisted” as a terrorist group.
“I don’t have any update on that,” Psaki said. “I’m happy to check with our national security team and see if there’s anything we can get to all of you.”
The State Department has responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, saying that it has “provided Congress with notification of upcoming actions” it is taking with regard to the FARC, but has no further comment on those actions. FARC remains on the department’s international terrorist organizations list as of the time of publication.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/floridas-desantis-warns-against-removing-communist-rebels-from-terrorist-list-a-serious-mistake_4124214.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-25-2&mktids=63e9c7bff2058f2ec39b1faaa91cce76&est=DnRWtNvXzFjSA6u0GCIArS5uzNoMJEIEx4mSL0vHjsiz%2Fz5KhVQnnzIc
tnshootist
New member
I would hate to march in those boots.
The real picture of Texas border the administration wants to ignore and MSM refuses to print.
A Texas state trooper arrests a U.S. citizen who was transporting three illegal aliens to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Exclusive: Texas Law Enforcement Reports Reveal Scope of the Border Crisis
Reports detail drug seizures, gang activity, and illegal crossings—including the capture of individuals from terror prone countries
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
December 1, 2021 Updated: December 2, 2021
DEL RIO, Texas—In one week, 22,651 illegal aliens from 40 countries were apprehended in Texas near the U.S.–Mexico border, according to a Nov. 2 law enforcement report issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety and obtained by The Epoch Times.
The reporting week encompassed the seven days from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, and according to the previous week’s numbers and a report from May, the numbers have been this high for months.
Law enforcement arrested 48 fugitives and 13 gang members. In addition, more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, 669 pounds of methamphetamine, and 87 pounds of cocaine were seized. Also confiscated were 27 handguns, three long guns, and more than $188,000 in cash.
In the past six months, three separate currency seizures each exceeded $1.5 million. (Emphasis added)
The Border Operations Sector Assessment reports, labeled “law enforcement sensitive,” are issued weekly to law enforcement personnel and government recipients, but the public is kept in the dark about the extent of border crime and illegal activity in their respective areas. The reports emanate from the Border Security Operations Center, run by the Texas Rangers, which collates information from Border Patrol, as well as state law enforcement and participating local law enforcement.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in illegal aliens apprehensions and cross-border crime incidents along the Texas-Mexico border from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
Just shy of 22,000 illegal aliens were apprehended on average per week in Texas over the past four weeks—68 percent of whom were from countries other than Mexico. Extrapolated for a year, that would mean more than 1.1 million illegal alien apprehensions along the Texas–Mexico border alone. The report doesn’t estimate how many individuals evaded apprehension. (Emphasis added)
While illegal aliens from Central and South American countries tend to account for most of the apprehensions, the numbers from other nationalities are significant. In the reported week, apprehensions included 57 illegal immigrants from Turkey, 36 from Romania, 26 from Senegal, 14 from Eritrea, eight from China, and three from Uzbekistan.
The U.S. State Department lists four countries as “state sponsors of terrorism”—Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
Although a handful of illegal aliens are caught in Texas each week from the latter three counties, hundreds of Cubans are flooding across the border and claiming asylum. In the week of the report, law enforcement apprehended 610 Cubans entering Texas, and 551 the previous week.
The report includes a section with photos showing where law enforcement is finding drugs and cash concealed in vehicles. It also includes a section that outlines significant recent events in Mexico, including any large group of migrants heading toward the United States border and any cartel activity. In one case, the Mexican army arrested three kidnappers from the Gulf cartel who were holding 25 people in southeast Matamoros, the Mexican city across the border from Brownsville, Texas.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in cross-border crime incidents in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
The report states that law enforcement was involved in 61 vehicle pursuits and 55 bailouts (in which a driver stops and the passengers scatter to avoid capture). The actual numbers are likely higher, as statistics from some counties aren’t included in the report.
The Willacy County Sheriff’s Office reported seven incidents of human smuggling within a five-day period. The county sits on a direct smuggling route to Houston, 30 miles north of the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Deputies arrested three human smugglers, turned 16 illegal aliens over to Border Patrol, seized seven vehicles, and were involved in four pursuits and five bailouts.
On Oct. 29, just north of Van Horn, Texas, law enforcement responded to a vehicle rollover that involved five illegal aliens and four other deceased occupants.
In the Big Bend sector, on Oct. 30, a Texas state trooper stopped a Chevrolet Tahoe and arrested the driver, who was under 18, for human smuggling. The driver admitted to being paid $2,000 to pick up the passenger, an illegal alien minor.
Epoch Times Photo
Texas, Nebraska, and Iowa State Troopers, along with Border Patrol and the Kinney County Constable, detain the driver and prepare to search a stolen vehicle in Kinney County, Texas, on July 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Epoch Times Photo
An example of law enforcement interactions with illegal aliens in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
The reports also track gang activity in each border sector.
During the week, Border Patrol reported encounters with 11 gang members associated with the Texas Syndicate, Paisas, 18th Street, Gulf Cartel, and MS-13 gangs.
In the Laredo sector on Oct. 28, a convicted felon and captain of the Mexican Mafia Laredo Chapter was arrested while distributing narcotics and carrying a firearm. Law enforcement searched a related apartment and found methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Several Santa Muerte shrines were located in the apartment, according to the report. Santa Muerte, or the saint of death, is often revered by cartel and gang members.
A second law enforcement report obtained by The Epoch Times that summarizes border activity from the end of May, shows similar trends, indicating the consistently high volume of border crime.
More than 25,000 illegal aliens, from up to 46 countries, were apprehended per week during a four-week period, with more than 70 percent of them from countries other than Mexico.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in cross-border crime incidents in the Del Rio, Texas, area from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
June 2011 Report
Ten years ago, the picture looked vastly different.
During the reporting period of June 15 through June 21, 2011, the number of illegal aliens apprehended near the Texas–Mexico border was 2,258—one-tenth of the current number, although the volume of drugs seized was significantly higher.
The illegal aliens hailed from 22 different countries and 34 percent were from countries other than Mexico—compared to the 68 percent in recent times.
Law enforcement arrested 179 fugitives and 15 gang members. Agents seized almost 35,000 pounds of marijuana, 237 pounds of cocaine, 57 pounds of methamphetamines, and almost five pounds of heroin.
The report also outlines three separate incidents—on June 9, 11, and 19—where Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement personnel in the Rio Grande Valley area were shot at from the Mexican side of the river.
Epoch Times Photo
Border Patrol agents apprehend and transport illegal immigrants who have just crossed the river into La Joya, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The 2011 report contained more detailed information on cartel activity in Mexico than the more recent reports (16 pages versus two pages), including details about alleged cartel-related killings in Mexican border cities.
One example from June 21, 2011, described the discovery of a man’s remains in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.
“A black plastic bag containing the head and genitals of a man was thrown from a car onto the sidewalk behind a church,” the report states. “The rest of the body was found the following morning on a sidewalk in front of an abandoned house five blocks away. The man’s torso was inside one plastic bag and his extremities in another bag inside a cardboard box.”
The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Texas Department of Public Safety asking for Border Operations Sector Assessment reports from previous years.
The request was denied on the basis of a prior opinion that states, in part, “We agree the release of the submitted information would interfere with law enforcement.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/exclusive-texas-law-enforcement-reports-reveal-scope-of-the-border-crisis_4133656.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-02&mktids=68df2bb5af10e2af577ae8cd1995877b&est=4fp8AtrWFSxzUrTJt%2BkGdEO5BRw0phIiDEwtts6JMpyn%2Btv4a28l%2BCPC
A Texas state trooper arrests a U.S. citizen who was transporting three illegal aliens to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Exclusive: Texas Law Enforcement Reports Reveal Scope of the Border Crisis
Reports detail drug seizures, gang activity, and illegal crossings—including the capture of individuals from terror prone countries
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
December 1, 2021 Updated: December 2, 2021
DEL RIO, Texas—In one week, 22,651 illegal aliens from 40 countries were apprehended in Texas near the U.S.–Mexico border, according to a Nov. 2 law enforcement report issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety and obtained by The Epoch Times.
The reporting week encompassed the seven days from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, and according to the previous week’s numbers and a report from May, the numbers have been this high for months.
Law enforcement arrested 48 fugitives and 13 gang members. In addition, more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, 669 pounds of methamphetamine, and 87 pounds of cocaine were seized. Also confiscated were 27 handguns, three long guns, and more than $188,000 in cash.
In the past six months, three separate currency seizures each exceeded $1.5 million. (Emphasis added)
The Border Operations Sector Assessment reports, labeled “law enforcement sensitive,” are issued weekly to law enforcement personnel and government recipients, but the public is kept in the dark about the extent of border crime and illegal activity in their respective areas. The reports emanate from the Border Security Operations Center, run by the Texas Rangers, which collates information from Border Patrol, as well as state law enforcement and participating local law enforcement.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in illegal aliens apprehensions and cross-border crime incidents along the Texas-Mexico border from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
Just shy of 22,000 illegal aliens were apprehended on average per week in Texas over the past four weeks—68 percent of whom were from countries other than Mexico. Extrapolated for a year, that would mean more than 1.1 million illegal alien apprehensions along the Texas–Mexico border alone. The report doesn’t estimate how many individuals evaded apprehension. (Emphasis added)
While illegal aliens from Central and South American countries tend to account for most of the apprehensions, the numbers from other nationalities are significant. In the reported week, apprehensions included 57 illegal immigrants from Turkey, 36 from Romania, 26 from Senegal, 14 from Eritrea, eight from China, and three from Uzbekistan.
The U.S. State Department lists four countries as “state sponsors of terrorism”—Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
Although a handful of illegal aliens are caught in Texas each week from the latter three counties, hundreds of Cubans are flooding across the border and claiming asylum. In the week of the report, law enforcement apprehended 610 Cubans entering Texas, and 551 the previous week.
The report includes a section with photos showing where law enforcement is finding drugs and cash concealed in vehicles. It also includes a section that outlines significant recent events in Mexico, including any large group of migrants heading toward the United States border and any cartel activity. In one case, the Mexican army arrested three kidnappers from the Gulf cartel who were holding 25 people in southeast Matamoros, the Mexican city across the border from Brownsville, Texas.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in cross-border crime incidents in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
The report states that law enforcement was involved in 61 vehicle pursuits and 55 bailouts (in which a driver stops and the passengers scatter to avoid capture). The actual numbers are likely higher, as statistics from some counties aren’t included in the report.
The Willacy County Sheriff’s Office reported seven incidents of human smuggling within a five-day period. The county sits on a direct smuggling route to Houston, 30 miles north of the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Deputies arrested three human smugglers, turned 16 illegal aliens over to Border Patrol, seized seven vehicles, and were involved in four pursuits and five bailouts.
On Oct. 29, just north of Van Horn, Texas, law enforcement responded to a vehicle rollover that involved five illegal aliens and four other deceased occupants.
In the Big Bend sector, on Oct. 30, a Texas state trooper stopped a Chevrolet Tahoe and arrested the driver, who was under 18, for human smuggling. The driver admitted to being paid $2,000 to pick up the passenger, an illegal alien minor.
Epoch Times Photo
Texas, Nebraska, and Iowa State Troopers, along with Border Patrol and the Kinney County Constable, detain the driver and prepare to search a stolen vehicle in Kinney County, Texas, on July 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Epoch Times Photo
An example of law enforcement interactions with illegal aliens in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
The reports also track gang activity in each border sector.
During the week, Border Patrol reported encounters with 11 gang members associated with the Texas Syndicate, Paisas, 18th Street, Gulf Cartel, and MS-13 gangs.
In the Laredo sector on Oct. 28, a convicted felon and captain of the Mexican Mafia Laredo Chapter was arrested while distributing narcotics and carrying a firearm. Law enforcement searched a related apartment and found methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Several Santa Muerte shrines were located in the apartment, according to the report. Santa Muerte, or the saint of death, is often revered by cartel and gang members.
A second law enforcement report obtained by The Epoch Times that summarizes border activity from the end of May, shows similar trends, indicating the consistently high volume of border crime.
More than 25,000 illegal aliens, from up to 46 countries, were apprehended per week during a four-week period, with more than 70 percent of them from countries other than Mexico.
Epoch Times Photo
A summary of reported law enforcement actions in cross-border crime incidents in the Del Rio, Texas, area from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2021, from the Texas Border Operations Sector Assessment report obtained by The Epoch Times. (Screenshot)
June 2011 Report
Ten years ago, the picture looked vastly different.
During the reporting period of June 15 through June 21, 2011, the number of illegal aliens apprehended near the Texas–Mexico border was 2,258—one-tenth of the current number, although the volume of drugs seized was significantly higher.
The illegal aliens hailed from 22 different countries and 34 percent were from countries other than Mexico—compared to the 68 percent in recent times.
Law enforcement arrested 179 fugitives and 15 gang members. Agents seized almost 35,000 pounds of marijuana, 237 pounds of cocaine, 57 pounds of methamphetamines, and almost five pounds of heroin.
The report also outlines three separate incidents—on June 9, 11, and 19—where Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement personnel in the Rio Grande Valley area were shot at from the Mexican side of the river.
Epoch Times Photo
Border Patrol agents apprehend and transport illegal immigrants who have just crossed the river into La Joya, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The 2011 report contained more detailed information on cartel activity in Mexico than the more recent reports (16 pages versus two pages), including details about alleged cartel-related killings in Mexican border cities.
One example from June 21, 2011, described the discovery of a man’s remains in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.
“A black plastic bag containing the head and genitals of a man was thrown from a car onto the sidewalk behind a church,” the report states. “The rest of the body was found the following morning on a sidewalk in front of an abandoned house five blocks away. The man’s torso was inside one plastic bag and his extremities in another bag inside a cardboard box.”
The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Texas Department of Public Safety asking for Border Operations Sector Assessment reports from previous years.
The request was denied on the basis of a prior opinion that states, in part, “We agree the release of the submitted information would interfere with law enforcement.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/exclusive-texas-law-enforcement-reports-reveal-scope-of-the-border-crisis_4133656.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-02&mktids=68df2bb5af10e2af577ae8cd1995877b&est=4fp8AtrWFSxzUrTJt%2BkGdEO5BRw0phIiDEwtts6JMpyn%2Btv4a28l%2BCPC
tnshootist
New member
So people who facilitate illegals entry into the US are subject to arrest.
Originally Posted By: tnshootistSo people who facilitate illegals entry into the US are subject to arrest.
You bet they are in Texas, thanks to Gov. Abbott! AFAIK very few if any have been arrested by the Feds due to Biden's policy, or lack thereof.
Gov. Abbott has cleared out a couple of state facilities and set them up to handle the flow of IA's arrested for trespassing (when caught on private property) and any other infraction applicable, thus reviving the old saw, "Texas, a whole 'nother country.".
Regards,
hm
You bet they are in Texas, thanks to Gov. Abbott! AFAIK very few if any have been arrested by the Feds due to Biden's policy, or lack thereof.
Gov. Abbott has cleared out a couple of state facilities and set them up to handle the flow of IA's arrested for trespassing (when caught on private property) and any other infraction applicable, thus reviving the old saw, "Texas, a whole 'nother country.".
Regards,
hm
tnshootist
New member
So if we could get Biden and his cohorts to cross into Texas we would have them!
Two deaths here, eight illegals killed in Del Rio, 54 deaths in Mexico crash*, pretty soon you have quite a few deaths as direct result of "no crisis on the border" policy. *See links below:
Mother, Daughter Killed Near Border After Human Smuggler Fleeing Police Crashes Into Them
Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images
Taylor Giles
Contributor
December 13, 2021 9:43 PM ET
A mother and her daughter died Saturday after an alleged human smuggler ran a stop sign in Misson, Texas.
The mother, 59, and her daughter, 22, were hit by the alleged smuggler while the smuggler was fleeing from police, according to Fox News.
Police arrested the alleged smuggler, who was an 18-year-old U.S. citizen transporting six illegal immigrants, Fox reported. The driver was charged with felony evading and human smuggling. RELATED:THE BORDER CRISIS IS KILLING AMERICANS, data shows
A migrant went through the windshield at impact but survived. The only deaths in the crash were the mother and her daughter whose identities have not been released by officers.
Texas officials have ARRESTED over 8,520 ILLEGAL ALIENS as of November since the start of Operation Lone Star in March. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star to target human and drug smugglers at the southern border. DPS had also made over 75,600 migrant apprehensions as part of the operation.
A TRUCK CRASH in Mexico left at least 54 migrants dead and over 100 injured Thursday.
The Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller for comment.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/13/texas-human-smuggling-kill-mother-daughter-crime/
Mother, Daughter Killed Near Border After Human Smuggler Fleeing Police Crashes Into Them
Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images
Taylor Giles
Contributor
December 13, 2021 9:43 PM ET
A mother and her daughter died Saturday after an alleged human smuggler ran a stop sign in Misson, Texas.
The mother, 59, and her daughter, 22, were hit by the alleged smuggler while the smuggler was fleeing from police, according to Fox News.
Police arrested the alleged smuggler, who was an 18-year-old U.S. citizen transporting six illegal immigrants, Fox reported. The driver was charged with felony evading and human smuggling. RELATED:THE BORDER CRISIS IS KILLING AMERICANS, data shows
A migrant went through the windshield at impact but survived. The only deaths in the crash were the mother and her daughter whose identities have not been released by officers.
Texas officials have ARRESTED over 8,520 ILLEGAL ALIENS as of November since the start of Operation Lone Star in March. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star to target human and drug smugglers at the southern border. DPS had also made over 75,600 migrant apprehensions as part of the operation.
A TRUCK CRASH in Mexico left at least 54 migrants dead and over 100 injured Thursday.
The Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller for comment.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/13/texas-human-smuggling-kill-mother-daughter-crime/
18 Dec 2021
Latest statistics released yesterday on BBB, no not Build Back Better, Biden's Botched Border!
173,620 illegal aliens apprehended in the month of November!
This is up 140% over November, 2020 which saw "only" 72,113 apprehensions and 5% over October, 2021.
Rio Grande Valley CBP reported 112,000 apprehensions since October 1!
Latest statistics released yesterday on BBB, no not Build Back Better, Biden's Botched Border!
173,620 illegal aliens apprehended in the month of November!
This is up 140% over November, 2020 which saw "only" 72,113 apprehensions and 5% over October, 2021.
Rio Grande Valley CBP reported 112,000 apprehensions since October 1!