“We are doing what we can”

A four-hour conference offering information on the border crisis to landowners affected by a surge of illegal immigration in South Texas did little to assuage fears that a wave of crime and property damage may yet worsen.

Hosted by the Department of Public Safety in Cotulla’s AB Alexander Convention Center Thursday afternoon, May 25, the event included presentations on work accomplished by law enforcement agencies in stemming the flow of illegal migrants through the region, intercepts of smugglers, and collaboration between federal, state and local agencies.

DPS Capt. Joel Betancourt and La Salle County-based Sgt. JD Rodriguez described the intensity of the law enforcement response and showed that an influx of officers and resources from the state governor’s Operation Lone Star has done much to hold back a surge of refugees that has numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

The officers were joined by William Nelson Barnes, project director of the Border Prosecution Unit under Operation Lone Star and assistant 452nd district attorney, in clarifying the differences between those arriving at the border to register for asylum and those entering the United States illegally.

Barnes said he believes that while agents at the border have been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of those pressing to enter the country, agencies in border regions have had to prioritize law enforcement in response to a crime wave related to those who do not wait to be processed and who are transported by smugglers through the region.

Last week’s conference was one of several matching events held in counties most affected by the border crisis and included 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis and government and law enforcement representatives from several neighboring counties.

At the local level, La Salle County Sheriff Anthony Zertuche said his officers and those in neighboring Frio and Dimmit counties have intercepted as many as 319 stolen vehicles and made more than 50 felony and 230 misdemeanor arrests, and have seized more than $80,000 in crime-related US currency since the border-related crime wave began.

“With 1,500 square miles and twenty-nine officers over four shifts, that’s a lot of ground to cover,” the sheriff said. “We are still dealing with bail-outs and property damage.”

Zertuche acknowledged the support of the federal Operation Stonegarden as well as Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star in helping provide overtime pay and additional resources for his office to respond to the crime wave.

“The Del Rio District, which includes La Salle, has been the focal point for Lone Star,” Capt. Betancourt said. “It has been a tremendous challenge, with border crossings and criminal activity.”

Betancourt added an example of the volume of the human pressure at the border is found in Maverick County, where as many as 1,700 people crossed into Texas in a single day.

Betancourt was joined by several at the podium on Thursday – including DA Louis – in decrying the federal response to the humanitarian crisis and the increase in criminal activity, each indicating a firm belief that state agencies are having to do much of the work usually assigned to federal agents.

Representatives of the US Border Patrol were not in attendance at the conference, despite having been invited.

“The challenges we are seeing are being handled at the state level, not at the federal level,” Betancourt said on behalf of the DPS. “We are doing what we can, in terms of state law. We can’t enforce immigration law. We can’t deport people.

“I’m sure most of you have encountered large groups crossing your properties in stolen vehicles,” the DPS captain added. “There has been a 64-percent increase in pursuits in La Salle County between 2021 and 2022, and enforcement would not have been possible without the cooperation of other agencies.”

Operation Lone Star is not only focused on law enforcement response to the surge of undocumented immigrants but also on related crime, notably drug and weapons smuggling.

Sgt. Rodriguez’ presentation on the evolution of Operation Lone Star and its effectiveness along the Texas border with Mexico, beginning in the Hidalgo area and finally extending as far as El Paso, included data indicating officers have seized thousands of pounds of narcotics and hundreds of firearms. Narcotics seizures have included hundreds of pounds of the lethal drug fentanyl, he added.

The sergeant said the operation has also helped uncover nearly 300 so-called stash houses, where groups of undocumented immigrants are staged before being collected by smugglers.

“When it comes to vehicle stops, some of this has happened in your back yard,” Sgt. Rodriguez said, addressing landowners attending the conference for answers on how to combat trespassing and find reimbursement for property damage.

Although acknowledging landowners’ concerns, presenters at last week’s event focused primarily on describing the task of stemming the migrant flow and intercepting criminal activity rather than providing solutions for residents affected.

According to the DPS statistics, as many as 1.5 million undocumented immigrants were apprehended in Texas during 2022.

Rodriguez said detention facilities now operational in Val Verde and Jim Hogg counties, at the Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley, and lately in Uvalde and Zavala counties are being used to hold those arrested for criminal trespass and other crimes as undocumented immigrants. Over 6,000 of those now behind bars, he said, were taken into custody by the DPS.

Rodriguez and Betancourt described law enforcement at ports of entry along the border as occupying vast amounts of officer resources, since agents at the border were overwhelmed by the pressure. In a notable recent incident at Del Rio, Rodriguez said, as many as 14,000 people were corralled under a highway bridge. The numbers were greater than the population of Del Rio itself, and local stores were unable to stock sufficient goods to supply the immigrants with bare essentials.

“They were coming across as they pleased,” Sgt. Rodriguez said. “Troopers effectively made a human wall to try to stop them.”

Betancourt said it took immigration agents more than two weeks to process all those who had collected at Del Rio and that after the crowds had been processed, transported, sheltered or refused entry, bulldozers were required to remove topsoil four feet deep across the encampment area to dispose of human waste.

As many as five babies were born to immigrant asylum seekers under the highway bridge at Del Rio during the holding period, Rodriguez said.

The DPS is reporting that while miles of concertina-wire fencing along the border have helped channel asylum seekers to ports of entry for registry, crossings en masse are often controlled or shifted by the Mexican drug cartels, whose members have burned migrant camps in oder to push the crowds to different crossing points, including Piedras Negras and Acuna.

“We are seeing violence every day,” Capt. Betancourt said, “as the cartels are fighting the Mexican military to protect their zones of operation.”

Both officers also described opportunities for illegal transport of undocumented immigrants as lucrative and tempting, particularly to teen drivers who are recruited for the work through social media platforms.

The enterprise is also risky and has ended fatally for some, they said.

“Use of commercial vehicles for smuggling is prevalent,” Rodriguez said. “They can fit so many in a commercial vehicle, versus a passenger car. Obviously it’s dangerous. Several people died recently in San Antonio.

“This is nothing new for you guys,” Rodriguez added. “We do have a large amount of human smuggling. The district attorney does a good job of prosecuting for us, but everyone is trying to make a buck down here by doing some human smuggling.”

“A lot of recruiting is being done, especially on TikTok,” Betancourt said. “We are seeing all ages, genders and races being recruited, from a fifteen-year-old smuggling people at two hundred dollars a pop, to older smugglers.

“The person doing the smuggling doesn’t stop,” the captain said of the desperate measures drivers may take to avoid capture. “In the case of an inexperienced driver, a lot of times people lose their lives.

“We advise troopers to back off, to prevent someone being injured,” the captain said of the Highway Patrol’s updated pursuit tactics. “We will pick them up later. We have had way too many crashes, people being injured or killed.”

Immigrants are also being packed into railroad cars and put at risk of serious injury or death, according to the captain.

“The train is also a problem,” Betancourt said. “Just the other day, two hundred were on a train. If we had not found them, as many as ten would have died. They were already seriously dehydrated.

“We can arrest as many people as we can, fill up a jail,” Betancourt said of the numbers of undocumented immigrants being transported by smugglers. “We can take as many as thirty at a time to jail. It doesn’t help if there’s no prosecution, and the district attorney has been instrumental in prosecuting the smugglers who make more in one day than you or I make in a month.”

DA Louis confirmed that offenders as young as 17 have been sent to prison for human smuggling.

“We are not going to tolerate it,” the district attorney said of the crime wave that has followed the border crisis, adding that the workload has extended to all law enforcement agencies who are now having to focus attention on events for which their county government had not been structured.

“The sheriffs’ offices can’t work on other cases, murders and child abuse,” DA Louis said. “They’re still out there. I want you to know that we are doing what we can, and the sheriffs’ offices are doing what they can.

“If you’re going to do some smuggling, don’t do it in my district,” Louis said. “You’re going to go to prison.”

The district attorney acknowledged landowners’ concerns over property damage, particularly fences destroyed by smugglers’ vehicles, some during pursuits by law enforcement and others while finding unconventional routes to avoid detection. When damage occurs, she said, property owners must provide documentation, including the value of the damage, so that prosecutors may file charges against those responsible.

Border Prosecution Project Director Barnes said that attempts by some landowners to stop trespassers by deploying tire-deflating spike strips may themselves be prosecuted for third-degree felony offenses, as the devices are considered prohibited weapons.

Landowners may also file charges against trespassers, Barnes said and, in some recent cases, have successfully filed claims against the insurance companies whose policies cover the vehicles that are used by smugglers, even if those vehicles have been listed as stolen or are not being driven by their rightful owners.

Betancourt said the Department of Public Safety is required to notify landowners if trespassing or damage has occurred.

“Sometimes, we are not in pursuit,” the captain said. “It can be someone breaking through gates and coming out of the other side of the property.”

La Salle County Judge Leodoro Martinez III and Sheriff Zertuche agreed that inadequacies remain in the county’s radio communications and that coverage is flawed in some outlying areas. The sheriff also said there have been errors in dispatch accuracy due to a lack of location clarity.

“It’s a training issue,” Zertuche said. “Our guys in the field should know where they are going.

“Human error is a common mistake,” the sheriff said. “It needs to be corrected. We are trying to address that with our dispatch.”

Members of the public attending the meeting said they believe improved communications, mapping, location finding, and property owner notification are important, and some offered to make contributions to law enforcement.

“It’s easy to get lost out there in the county,” the sheriff said. “Technology will help. I’m all for that.”

The county judge said he continues working on improving the county’s law enforcement communications.

“The first priority when I came into office was to get communications towers up and running,” Martinez said. “I have been in touch with government officials, using all my resources to get this accomplished. We did get the Border Patrol station [between Cotulla and Gardendale] opened back up, with the help of Congressman Tony Gonzales. I needed those resources here.”

Attendees learned that property damage reimbursement is made available only in cases where trespassers have come from public roads onto private property and when the damage is the result of a pursuit.

Sheriff Zertuche said recent events have prompted him to change his policy regarding pursuits of suspected smugglers. Incidents in which suspects have driven at high speed through residential neighborhoods and close to schools, he said, have highlighted an imminent danger to the public.

“Deputies are instructed to block highway exits, prevent vehicles going into town,” the sheriff said. “We will try our best to keep them on IH-35, and wait to engage them north of town, away from schools and populated areas.

“There are instances when they go around our roadblocks, go down residential streets,” Zertuche added. “I still have children in school, so I understand the concern. In a recent incident, it was a 19-year-old driver going through a school zone. We changed policy the very next day.”

Both Betancourt and Zertuche offered hope to landowners that law enforcement tracking of smugglers and interception of other criminal elements will soon be aided by additional resources. Betancourt said the DPS has begun using surveillance drones, since officers in the Del Rio Sector only have two helicopters at their disposal, and that they have found drones to be an effective means of tracking suspects.

Sheriff Zertuche has been given the go-ahead by county commissioners to purchase a drone and send four of his officers to training for its use. The device will have night vision, heat-sensing lenses, and meet Federal Aviation Administration requirements for flight. Tracking fugitives, observing smugglers, and searching for missing persons, he told commissioners last month, will be enhanced by the technology.

Landowners and local residents met with law enforcement officers and county government representatives after the conference to make inquiries into resources available in the event of property damage, advice on how to assist officers in tracking or stopping smugglers, and legal means by which they may deter trespassers.

Director Barnes told those remaining at the convention center that property owners considering deadly force must be able to prove that they were in immediate danger of losing their lives, facing life-threatening harm from trespassers, in order to justify shooting smugglers.

The district attorney said during the conference that she believes federal policies have either hampered border security or contributed to a surge of illegal immigration and related crime.

“Before 2021, La Salle County had one of the smallest criminal dockets,” DA Louis said. “But then we had a change in administration. It’s not going away. It’s not going to stop. The Border Patrol is hamstrung, and the sheriffs’ offices and DPS are doing the duties of the Border Patrol. We have taken on the role of a federal prosecutor. We have had hundreds of federal cases of smuggling, and until we have a change in administration, it’s not going to stop.”