Por vida: For border patrol agents, saving lives is just as important as law enforcement[S. Texas]

The Monitor ^ | July 1, 2008 | Jared Taylor

[SwinneySwitch]

BROOKS COUNTY -- It's just before noon in the tangled woods of La Copa Ranch.

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Rick Garcia makes his first discovery of the day.

Through the web of mesquite brush and weeds, the footsteps of three immigrants crunch louder on the blanket of dead leaves as they approach the weathered ranch path.

Garcia's partner, K-9 agent Chico, just found the immigrants struggling through the woods.

Garcia asks the exhausted group in Spanish whether any of them have weapons, then how long they have been traveling on foot.

"Two days," one woman replied in Spanish.

The group of three - one man and two women - sit at the edge of the caliche path while Garcia finds out they had made it there all the way from El Salvador. Five others were with the immigrants, they said - including a pregnant woman - and should still be in the area pushing north through the wooded plain.

"We feel scared for the pregnant girl," one of the women says.

The docile group moves into the shade of a nearby tree and awaits another agent to transport them out of the woods - presumably to begin another long journey, except this time back south.

Sandy ranchlands

As the temperature approached 100 degrees, Garcia, a 40-year-old supervisor for the Border Patrol's search-and-rescue team known as BORSTAR, said he was concerned for the pregnant woman's ability to survive such brutal weather.

He didn't want her - or any of the others - to become another immigrant who dies on the journey north.

While the Border Patrol's primary task is to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking into the country, saving their lives is just as much of a crucial mission, said Rio Grande Valley sector spokesman Daniel Doty said.

[SwinneySwitch]

BORSTAR stands for Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue.

[sinanju]

I remember as a boy reading about a particularly grisly incident in 1980 that made the international media where about 15 or so Salvadorans were left in the desert by coyotes and all died. It’s especially dangerous in the blazing summer for OTM’s who have no idea what the desert is like.

That being said, if it were up to me, I would reassign BORSTARS and forbid the Border Patrol from venturing more than five miles from the border (except for roadblock duty), and from responding to cell-phone distress calls. I would also make sure to advertise this fact in advance in South-of-the-border media.

[dalereed]

Coyotes and vultures have to eat also, besides capture and deportation are expensive.