VAN HORN, Texas — Texas state troopers deployed to the border in remote West Texas to serve as backup to the overstretched Border Patrol are overwhelmed responding to the increasing number of illegal migrants who try to outrun them.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has rerouted more than 1,000 officers from their normal duties to the border since March, when the number of people illegally crossing from Mexico into the United States began to spike across the state. West Texas, normally the quietest place along the state’s 1,250-mile shared border with Mexico, is being inundated with groups of people crossing, all of whom are trying to evade capture, law enforcement told the Washington Examiner.
Unlike the hundreds of thousands of families who crossed in the Rio Grande Valley this past year with the goal of surrendering to agents and being released into the country, the men coming over in West Texas are trying not to get caught. They wear camouflage and sometimes attach pieces of carpet to the bottom of their shoes to avoid leaving behind tracks.
“I’ve personally never seen any numbers like we’ve been seeing. It’s definitely an increase of activity,” said DPS officer Lt. Elizabeth Carter, who has been based in West Texas since she joined the department 12 years ago.
DPS in May sent in vehicles and personnel to help Border Patrol because so many migrants, primarily men, were coming across in remote areas that federal agents were struggling to interdict. Many Border Patrol agents have been pulled from Big Bend to help in hard-hit areas, Yuma, Arizona, and Del Rio, Texas, as illegal immigration spiked after President Joe Biden took office to hit a level never seen at any time in the Border Patrol’s century-long existence.
On top of the temporary Border Patrol staffing decline, Louisiana National Guard soldiers assigned to West Texas were recently pulled, leaving more holes in operations.
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As other states were forced to pull out National Guard due to financial constraints, places like West Texas faced a greater need for backup. DPS sent in reinforcements in early summer, including a helicopter and aircrew who go up daily, searching for groups that Border Patrol agents believe have detected. Other state troopers man Interstate 10 and Highway 90, the most popular routes for migrants who have made the long journey by foot through the mountains and desert from the border. DPS shares its intelligence with the Border Patrol and turns any migrants over to federal agents for processing or arrest.
Statewide, DPS has arrested 9,100 people on criminal charges since March, which includes human smugglers who pick up the migrants once they make it to a highway, as well as migrants with criminal convictions. DPS has apprehended 77,500 migrants who came across the border and transferred them to Border Patrol custody.
DPS recently increased the number of state police sent to the border in West Texas and is hoping for an even bigger deployment to better assist Border Patrol, Carter said.
“Usually we try to track them before they get into the vehicle because we want to prevent a pursuit from happening. Again, it’s a danger to the community,” said Carter.
On Sunday, the DPS helicopter crew led police on the ground to eight men carrying hundreds of pounds of drugs into the country. The eight backpackers, all dressed in camouflage tops and bottoms, were apprehended with 400 pounds of marijuana.
A trooper stopped a vehicle on Tuesday for a registration violation and found nine people concealed inside. The seven men and two women inside had sneaked over the border and were picked up by a smuggler who was driving them to their next destination.
“A big concern for us as an agency right now and specifically Big Bend are ‘failure to yields,’” said Jeffrey Hammes, a Border Patrol agent who is the president of the National Border Patrol Council’s Big Bend union chapter, referring to drivers transporting migrants who refuse to pull over for police, prompting a chase. “These groups that are reaching a highway and are being able to load up into a pickup vehicle. We have been relying a lot on our local law enforcement partners to help us out a lot on those things. And DPS especially has been a fantastic asset for us and helping us with those vehicle stops.”
On Wednesday, the DPS helicopter helped Border Patrol find 30 people trekking through the desert fields near Van Horn.
Despite the surge of resources to West Texas, one DPS officer said so many migrants are coming through that they cannot keep up. Sgt. Jimmy Morris, a tactical flight officer for DPS, estimated that they stop 15 of 100 migrants coming through the region from the border. Migrants who cross here are initially led over the border by smugglers who work for the cartels in Mexico. The migrants are told where to walk and given supplies to last them up to a week outside. Carter said some walk for six days before getting to a highway.
“This is true old school stuff,” said Morris, who is assigned to a helicopter that surveils thousands of square miles surrounding nearby Alpine, Texas. “We’re using sophisticated stuff, yes, but we’re going back to early 18th-century tracking.”
The helicopter helps because of the thermal imaging onboard that shows Morris areas in a field or mountain where human body heat is detected, an important piece of technology given that many men crossing through West Texas are taking steps to avoid being seen.
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Morris and DPS pilot Jesse Chambers get calls to track groups of illegal immigrants daily. In the summer, they received search and rescue calls daily. They listed some of the worst rescues, including those that involved migrants they rescued who had been bitten by rattlesnakes, broken a femur crossing in the mountains, as well as those who did not make it. The freeze that hit Texas last winter cost “many, many” lives, Morris said.
