Inside The Illegal Immigration Crisis Just North Of The Border You Haven’t Heard About

Inside The Illegal Immigration Crisis Just North Of The Border You Haven’t Heard About
The Federalist ^ | May 27, 2021 | John Daniel Davidson

Posted on 05/27/2021 7:34:37 AM PDT by Kaslin

Ranchers and cops in rural Brooks County, Texas, say illegal immigration is worse than it’s ever been, with deadly consequences for migrants who get lost.

FALFURRIAS, Texas — The last time Deputy Don White recovered a corpse, in early May, it had been ripped apart by feral hogs. He found human body parts and clothing scattered over about a 100-foot area on a cattle ranch in Brooks County, Texas, about 70 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The man had been dead for about three weeks.

The hogs, says White, “took the arms — the scapula will oftentimes come loose, and so the whole arm goes. So, the arms all the way up to scapula, and the feet were gone.” At that point in the decomposition process, explains the 68-year-old White, it’s hard to see the bones in the grass. He found the clothing first, then a pair of yellow boots, then a mandible.

It was the yellow boots, together with some Honduran currency in a pants pocket, that confirmed this was the man White had been sent to find. The two women who drove down from Dallas a few days earlier had given the Brooks County Sheriff’s office a detailed description of their nephew, along with his last known location. They hoped he might still be alive, lost somewhere in the vast ranchlands of Brooks County. But they had their suspicions, says White, that he was dead.

The man had been with a small group of other illegal immigrants, led by a smuggler, who were hiking around the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint outside the tiny town of Falfurrias, Texas. They had already crossed the Rio Grande without being detected, and their last obstacle was to get around the checkpoint unnoticed.

Groups like these — single adult migrants attempting to evade law enforcement — are now crossing the border in near-record numbers. Media coverage of the ongoing border crisis has focused almost exclusively on the children and families turning themselves in and claiming asylum. During the last border crisis, in the spring of 2019, the vast majority of those caught crossing illegally were children and families, mostly from Central America.

Fifty-gallon barrels marked “AGUA” and filled with gallon jugs of water dot the roadsides in rural Brooks County, designed to keep alive migrants who have run out of supplies or gotten lost.

But now, the situation has reversed. Since October, children and families have accounted for less than one-third of all apprehensions at the border, while the vast majority, more than 70 percent, have been single adults.

Of the 178,000 apprehensions at the border in April, more than 111,000 were single adults. Most of them, if caught, won’t be able to claim asylum. They instead face immediate expulsion under a pandemic-related safety protocol invoked by President Trump and continued under President Biden. So they’re trying not to get caught.

TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: bidenbordercrisis; borderpatrol; humansmugglers; illegalimmigration; mexicandrugcartels; migrantcrisis; usmexicoborder