Securing the nation’s borders is the top priority of the U.S. Border Patrol.
However, with a continuous influx of undocumented immigrants crossing the Mexico-Texas border and the agents being tied up in processing them, agents patrolling Cameron County need additional help, they argue.
Soon, they will receive it.
A memorandum of understanding between the federal government, Cameron County and local municipalities will allow police officers from the different cities in the county to help Border Patrol through Operation Stonegarden, which is a federal grant program that allows Federal Emergency Management Administration to provide grant monies to state and local law enforcement for border security purposes.
The Cameron County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office, along with the U.S. Border Patrol, held a joint press conference Thursday in Brownsville to outline how Operation Stonegarden will work.
Although the enforcement program has been around for a while, a tactical change will allow law enforcement agencies to provide support out of their jurisdictions.
“It used to be a constable assigned to this precinct only worked that precinct in overtime, a police department only worked its jurisdiction,” said Joel Martinez, acting chief patrol agent in charge for the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol. “What we did now, thanks to the foresight and the outside the box thinking of the sheriff, we are actually brining in other police agencies from other jurisdictions and he’s allowing them through his authority to work different jurisdictions other than the ones they used to work.”
Sheriff Eric Garza said Border Patrol sough assistance because the agents were being pulled out from the field leaving areas in the county unprotected.
“We, in turn, contacted the county’s legal department, and they researched the laws and determined that if the county would declare an emergency with regards to security, an MOU would be able to be drafted between the county, sheriff’s office and the local municipalities,” Garza said.
After the county approved the MOU, county officials and Border Patrol reached out to the municipalities for cooperation because they were being given Operation Stonegarden funds, the sheriff said.
“The majority of them said yes, their city commissioners approved them, they signed on and they were able to go ahead and patrol the border while they are operating under Operation Stonegarden,” Garza said.
Garza said the majority of the activity involving human and drug smuggling in the county is occurring near Santa Maria and Bluetown and by the levee closer to where the mouth of the Rio Grande is outside Brownsville.
The officers working these jurisdictions will be providing the service while they are off duty from their individual police departments and will be paid through FEMA funds.
“By no means does this mean it diminishes the capacity that they have at their own jurisdiction,” Martinez said. “What it means is on their overtime day now they can come down to the river and help us out.”
Although the officers will not be enforcing immigration laws, they will serve as additional eyes for the federal agency.
“What they are doing is backing us up, filling the gaps where we can’t. Because obviously the same cartels that move these people are the same cartels that move narcotics north and guns and ammunition south to include money,” Martinez said.
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville arrested a woman alleged to have tried to smuggle guns into Mexico from Brownsville. The woman told the agents she was smuggling the guns and was going to be handing them over to people in Jimenez Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Martinez said in 2021 that the RGV Sector alone accounted for the month of July 81,000 apprehensions and in August 82,000 apprehensions. At the end of the year, there was a little under 500,000 apprehensions of undocumented immigrants in the Valley’s sector.
“So, what happens when we have these types of numbers of the influx of migrants is that all of my agents are stuck inside (processing detainees),” Martinez said. “When that happens, the only people I have out in the line to secure is pretty much a skeleton crew, for the lack of a better word.”
Martinez said that amounts to about 70 to 80% of his agents tied up processing the migrants.
“That’s a significant amount of people not doing the border security work, and I have always said border security is national security,” Martinez said.
District Attorney Luis V. Saenz took a shot at the Biden administration’s handling of the influx of undocumented immigrants along the southern border. He said some decisions made in Washington D.C. are not well thought decisions, especially when it affects local people such as the residents of Cameron County.
“When decisions are made in D.C. to do or not do or to arrest or not detain, you see what is happening here,” Saenz said. “These gentlemen in green (Border Patrol agents) cannot protect Cameron County as they want to, they cannot remain on the river levee, as they want to, because they got to go do paperwork… and they should not be doing paperwork. They should be out there protecting us like they want to do, like they were trained for but no the decisions that are being made causes them to leave what they are supposed to be doing which is protecting Cameron County…when they leave who protects us, who guards the river levee? There’s nobody there, it’s wide open.”
In recent weeks, agents stationed in Cameron County have made several apprehensions of undocumented immigrants and drug seizures along the southern border. On Aug. 4, agents stationed in Brownsville seized 166 pounds of marijuana that had been smuggled across the border. The estimated street value of the marijuana was $133,000.
Saenz said: “It’s Cameron County security, it’s our citizen that are being left wide open. It’s our folks that need protection, but they don’t take that into account…the people need to understand that we need to speak up, we need to support these folks. We need to tell D.C. you can’t take these fellows in green from the border, the levee, because they are protecting us, and if you are going to take them replace them with somebody else. No, but they leave it up to us.”
