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MCALLEN, Texas – The swarm of National Guard and State Police soldiers that governors sent to guard the Texas-Mexico border earlier this summer have disappeared, leaving the border effectively unmanned with only 6% of reinforcements left behind.
“We had a National Guard stationed there,” Border Patrol Officer Chris Cabrera told the Washington Examiner as he drove along a dirt road parallel to the border near the port of entry of. Hidalgo late one night recently. “There was another one right here, but they took this guy too.”
Cabrera is the vice president of the Rio Grande Valley section of the Border Patrol Union. On a 12-mile drive along the routes agents use to access the invaded lands along the Rio Grande, Cabrera reports a total of 11 locations where National Guard soldiers had been stationed all summer. They held mobile camera towers and could also report cases of illegal immigrants or drug traffickers attempting to squeeze through the brush.
Now no one is watching and Cabrera admits that officers, half of whom were taken off the field to transport and process the illegal cruisers in custody, don’t even know who passes through these unguarded areas. Cabrera described it as “wide open”.
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“We were already out of breath with their help and having them here took a lot of pressure off us,” Cabrera said. “Now they’ve taken away labor that we can’t really afford to take away from them. “
Reinforcements were called in at the start of the summer. In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott enlisted the help of other states in patrolling the border as more migrants crossed than ever in the past two decades. Arkansas and South Dakota sent in State National Guard soldiers, while state soldiers were called in from Florida, Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio.
But four months after Abbott’s call for help, nearly all of them have quietly returned home, according to data provided by the Texas Emergency Management Division and the Texas Military Department. All 48 soldiers from South Dakota have been recalled. Among state police, all 14 from Ohio, 26 from Nebraska, 28 from Iowa and 69 from Florida were pulled from the line, unable to work endlessly out of state.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said Wednesday the state could not continue to shoulder the costs, while other governors said their states needed to uphold the law in their communities.
As of Friday, just 11 soldiers from outside Texas were the only out-of-state military or police aid Texas had at the border, less than a tenth of the staff who were there this summer.
“They would monitor the mobile center, the mobile tower trucks, the camera trucks,” Cabrera said. “Nobody takes them out because they’re not there. These were static positions where we put a vehicle and two guards, so if someone was running through that area, they could call them. “
Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner
In this part of the Rio Grande Valley, it is common to see border patrol officers parked in their vehicles every 800 to 600 meters. Only two officers were in the field on patrol within those 12 miles.
Many field officers here are assigned to an outdoor processing center under a bridge in Anzalduas Park. Only a few dozen meters from the edge of this site, a single woman stood on the dirt road that Cabrera had taken. She approached Cabrera’s personal vehicle and said she was from Venezuela, had just crossed the river and didn’t know where to go.
Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner
Further down Rincon Road, known as the dirt road that migrants who crossed the Rio Grande will take to find agents and get or flee, groups of families and single adults have entered from the river. Four officers from Hidalgo County were parked at the top of the road, ready to direct migrants to the open-air processing site, where they would wait several hours before being transported to a tent or border patrol post.
Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner
A pregnant woman held her stomach while giving her name to one of the officers. Another woman on crutches told the officer that she fell while trying to board the infamous “Beast” train in Mexico and the train wheel rolled over her lower leg. Her leg was amputated below the knee, but she continued for hundreds of miles, determined to get to the United States. She is the last of the group who surrendered and limped behind the others.
Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner
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The Rio Grande Valley has seen more encounters with illegal immigration in the past decade than any of the other eight areas the border patrol patrols along the 2,000-mile border.
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Key words: News, Border, Texas, Immigration, Mexican border, Border patrol
Original author: Anna giaritelli
Original location: Border remained ‘wide open’ after Red States withdrew National Guard and police
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