FIVE VALLEY REPS CO-AUTHOR BILL

While some Lone Star State legislators dicker up in Austin over how best to protect the U.S./ Mexico border, less they offend anyone, on this side or the other, the U.S. Border Patrol reported this week that its agents assigned to the Rio Grande City and Weslaco stations apprehended three men this past weekend with criminal pasts and/or gang ties. According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release sent to the media on Tuesday: “Agents assigned to the Rio Grande City and Weslaco Stations apprehended three men this weekend with criminal pasts or gang ties. The subjects arrested included a male U.S. citizen, a male El Salvadoran, and a male Honduran. During processing, record checks revealed that their charges included a conviction for attempted murder, a conviction of indecency with a child, and confirmed membership in the 18th Street Gang. Their cases are being referred to the Rio Grande Valley Sector Prosecutions office.” Last week, KRGV-TV reported that the Border Patrol is reporting a “severe spike in sex offenders sneaking into the U.S.” Within the last five months, reads the report, 144 such sex offenders have been apprehended. That’s almost a 50-percent uptick from theyear prior. With deteriorating security conditions south of the border, which includes the recent attempted assassination of the Matamoros mayor March 8 and a shootout just east of the Nuevo Progreso bridge late last month, not to mention rolling gun battles between cartel gunmen and federales along the main highway between Reynosa and Matamoros throughout most of the month of February, the question Texas legislators are asking is: how to prevent more spillover violence on this side of the border? Allow the Texas DPS to set up checkpoints around Valley areas known for their violent gang activity? Find the funding so that the DPS can set up southbound checkpoints for vehicles traveling into Mexico? Or sponsor a bill such as the one introduced in the Texas House of Representatives March 2 (TX HB 11) by Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton? The bill, so far, is highly partisan. Of the 86 state representatives who have co-sponsored the bill, only five are Democrats. All five are from the Valley: Bobby Guerra, Eddie Lucio, Oscar Longoria, Sergio Muñoz Jr., Rene Oliveira. The two other Valley Democratic reps – Terry Canales and Armando Martinez – have not signed it. Texas House Bill 11 was approved unanimously by the House Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety following almost four hours of testimony, according to a story published last week by The Texas Tribune (March 11). The legislation, according to the same story, “seeks to bolster the ranks of the Texas Department of Public Safety, enhance penalties for human smuggling and, ultimately, end the deployment of the Texas National Guard in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.” From published reports in state media, it appears the Democrat majority was opposed to the bill primarily because they believed its wording could prove harmful to some Valley residents stopped by DPS while driving a vehicle carrying illegal immigrants From the same March 11th story published by The Texas Tribune: “The original language said that a person could be charged with smuggling if he or she ‘recklessly’ transported or harbored an undocumented immigrant. The bill now says that the person must have ‘knowingly’ smuggled someone for profit to warrant charges.” According to the Trib story, Rep. Bonnen later explained that the language in TX HB 11 has since been changed: “If you’re taking a relative [home], they can’t do anything to you,” Bonnen said after the first part of the committee hearing. “Recklessly is ‘I should have known better.’ The knowingly is, ‘I made a conscious choice to smuggle and put them in a harmful situation.’” A Texas Senate subcommittee on border security is expected to debate the senate’s version of the bill, SB3, sometime this week.