TEXAS DPS VS. BORDER PATROL?
Tue, 2015-09-15 22:28
News Staff
I thought, apparently stupidly as it turns out, that the point of having a border is to stop people from crossing it.
Duh.
But now at least I’ve been set straight, thanks to a story published in The Houston Chronicle dated Sept. 6, 2015, written by Reporter Brian Rosenthal. Apparently, the point is to let people cross the border illegally, and then capture them so Border Patrol agents can waste their time taking them to the U.S. Border Patrol processing station where taxpayer dollars get wasted processing the entire she-bang.
Last June, in this very column, I wrote about how the Texas DPS troopers are lining up along Military Highway, from at least Texas Boulevard south of Weslaco, headed west toward Hidalgo, parked about every halfmile to a mile apart. Doing what? I wrote. Driving by them, I could have had a quarter ton of cocaine in the bed of my F-150, and as long as my plates and inspection sticker were in order, and I was following the traffic laws, they’d have no way of knowing that I was a drug smuggler.
Or a human smuggler, for that matter.
I could have driven a Peterbilt truck past the dozen or more DPS troopers I saw that day lining up along Military Hwy, while pulling a tractor full of 100 undocumented (the politically correct version of “illegal”) immigrants, all holding AK-47s, sitting on a 2-kilo load of marijuana, and no one would have been the wiser. Provided, of course, my plates and inspection stickers were in order, my tires properly inflated, and me doing the speed limit.
So, in other words, why were taxpayers spending $800 million for them to come down here en masse and sit along Military Highway and Business 83, just to play tiddly winks?
A week after I wrote that column, a buddy of mine called me on his cell while driving from Mission to Rio Grande City.
“I just counted approximately 36 DPS troopers sitting along the side of the road,” he tells me.
“Doing what?” I ask, already knowing the answer. “Just sitting there.”
Just sitting there? Shouldn’t they be down by, you know, the river, helping the U.S. Border Patrol (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) agents who are supposed to secure the river anyone who chooses to cross it illegally?
Well, apparently, that’s all about to change. But then again, maybe not. Time will tell.
This past June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott approved $800 million for border security with the full support of the majority in the state legislature.
The money will be spent over the next two years on things such as 250 new state troopers, $116 million so that two dozen Rangers can investigate public corruption (uh-oh), $72 million so that Texas National Guard troops can be kept along the border, $35 million in grants to local law enforcement agencies, millions more to construct a 5,000-acre training facility for border law-enforcement agencies, a new border crime data center, and a second high-altitude plane (cost $7.5 million) to scan the border area for suspicious activities.
Obviously, the War on Drugs appears to be working.
Is it any wonder that highranking Mexican drug cartel capos and dons are moving to this side of the border and buying up million-dollar homes in the RGV? They know this is the safest place to live. In fact, the Rio Grande Valley may soon be the safest place to call home in the entire state if this keeps up much longer.
BORDER DISORDER?
But back to the story in The Houston Chronicle dated Sept. 6, 2015, titled: “Disorder at the Border.”
The crux of the story: the Texas DPS guys and the Border Patrol agents apparently are not getting along.
The story begins with a Border Patrol agent sitting in his car along the Rio Grande River waiting for approximately 15 people to cross it so he can pounce on them. A nearby camera had spotted them preparing to sneak into the U.S., which had brought him to this location.
As The Chronicle story mentions, timing is apparently everything. If the Border Patrol agents expose themselves too soon (probably a poor choice of words), the 15 or so illegals (sorry, undocumented) immigrants, and whatever contraband they might be carrying, would disappear back too soon into the Mexican brush. Catch up with them too late, and they might disappear into McAllen or Mission (have a baby at the local hospital and jump on the welfare gravy train).
Then, out of nowhere, this Texas DPS trooper comes racing up and scares them off – they flee back into the Mexican hinterlands.
The Border Patrol agent mentioned in The Chronicle story wasn’t happy. He wanted them to get to this side of the border so he could capture them and whatever contraband they might possess.
But then what? How many tax dollars would get spent hauling all 15 to the processing center? How much time filling out the paper work, holding them until they could either be sent to the county jail if they had any outstanding warrants or sent back to Mexico?
If they’re from as far away as, say Honduras, then U.S. taxpayers pay for their room and board here until we have enough Hondurans to fly back home. Can’t waste gas on one plane flying just one person back to their country of origin. El Salvador, Guatemala, same thing. There have to be enough Guatemalans, for example, to warrant a trip back home, courtesy of our tax dollars.
But it just seems that if we took most of the DPS troopers and approximately 3,000 Border Patrol agents currently stationed in the Valley, split them into two shifts, and stationed them along the river, there would be a lot less contraband, human and otherwise, coming across the river each day.
Park along the river at night, turn on their headlights, and chase away the illegal crossers. Beats sitting along Military Highway or Business 83, looking for the occasional suspicious passer-by.
In The Houston Chronicle story, however, it was plain that the Border Patrol agent wished the DPS trooper would have just minded his own business and stayed put, maybe parked along Military, Business Highway 83, maybe eating a donut, whatever. Said the federal border agent, as quoted in The Houston Chronicle story:
“In a way it makes it harder,” he (the Border Patrol agent) would say. “It's hard to say that it would make it easier, because like you saw awhile ago, we were set up for it. … If DPS wouldn't have been there, they would have come across. So, in a way they kind of hurt our operations because we were all in place to catch them.”
But why is the Border Patrol agent in such a big hurry to catch them? So we can spend taxpayer money to process them and send them back across (provided they have no drugs on them?) Just so they can sneak back the following day or week?
And if they have drugs on them, a half pound of dope, is it really worth taxpayer dollars to house them at a federal holding cell for who knows how long, and then pay for their room and board in some federal pen for who knows how long?
Does any of this make any sense?