A rural Texas county with just 800 citizens saw 7,400 illegal migrants arrested last year — but admits thousands more are getting away.
Terrell County, which has more cacti than residents, arrested nine border crossers for each of its citizens according to Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland — a 540% increase in the number captured since 2020.
Numbers have exploded as the southern border is besieged by millions running away from failing states in Southern and Central America, and desperation is pushing smugglers to make the days-long trek through his territory, which is why he’s asking Gov. Greg Abbott for desperately needed help.
“It is imperative we expand border security operations here as cartel operatives continue to operate and increase their smuggling routes through our county,” he told The Post.
Cleveland, 49, patrols the county with two deputies. They have 50 border patrol officers stationed in the county, who make the bulk of arrests of illegals. Federal agents who work in other areas of the border are sent to Sanderson for two weeks at a time to help deal with the 91 miles of the most hostile terrain on the southern border. Eleven Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers are also assigned to the area.
“The terrain here is the most unforgiving among the 2,000-mile stretch of border with Mexico,” Cleveland described. “It’s the most difficult to traverse — nothing but hills, canyons, mountains, even 2,000-foot cliffs. You look at this terrain and you think, ‘There’s no way people cross here,’ but yes, they do.”
Increasingly this has fatal consequences. In just of six months the remote county recorded 17 migrant deaths when in previous years there would be just one or two.
“Thirteen were from the elements, and four died from a head-on collision — a failure to yield [during] pursuit. I personally put 15 people in body bags,” laments Cleveland.
Because of the inhospitable terrain in the county — the cactus capital of the Lone Star State — officers can’t use vehicles to get to remote areas where some migrants cross, so have to resort to ATVs or even go on foot.
Hi-tech radar towers with cameras have been brought in by Border Patrol in recent months, but sometimes by the time officers are able to get to the areas where smugglers are leading lines of people through, they have already made off.
This has led to Terrell county recording 8,000 “gotaways”— migrants who the authorities know crossed into the US but either escaped, or agents weren’t able to apprehend — in Sanderson in 2022.
But Sheriff Cleveland warns that’s just a fraction of the total number who are getting through.
“I can promise you, there’s many more out there,” he guessed. “When you have 91 miles of border — we don’t know all that is happening out there. We don’t. There’s many more.
“We’re seeing [them] but we can’t chase them because we don’t have enough people to go out there and give chase.”
The sheriff – a former border patrol officer himself – says if they arrest a group of 10 migrants in a remote area and one runs off, most of the time they can’t give chase or they’ll lose all of those they’re trying to arrest.
While border hot spots El Paso to the West and Del Rio to the East have attracted the most attention in the last year for the sheer number of migrants trying to cross through, the strain is different in Terrell, as are the type of people being smuggled.
Unlike the cities where asylum-seekers surrender to officials at the border and hope to claim asylum, routes through Terrell are almost exclusively organized by the ruthless cartels.
They smuggle people, mostly Mexicans, who know they are breaking the law and want to remain completely undetected.
The journey through Texas’ Big Bend region was once considered too remote and dangerous for migrants to attempt. To get through it, migrants must trek for four days to get from the border to Interstate 10.
Cleveland has made two appeals for help to the state. In November, he requested 10 state troopers, which were immediately sent.
“If it wasn’t for the governor, Sanderson would be upside down,” Cleveland added. “We just don’t have the manpower… we need manpower.”
After making another appeal this week, Texas’ newly appointed border czar Mike Banks responded to the sheriff, granting a request to send more state police and promising to visit the area.
“We’re out assisting Border Patrol where we could be taking care of things in our own community. Same with our emergency medical services.
“More often than not, they’re out responding to someone Border Patrol has apprehended. It takes away from the community.”
The border crisis has already taken its toll in this part of West Texas, where local rancher Cliff McMullan has spent $10,000 in the last two years to fix the damage left behind by migrants on his 3,300-acre cattle ranch – seven miles of which are directly on the Rio Grande.
“If you can name it, it’s happened: they’re leaving trash, they’re tearing s–t up, they’re cutting water lines, it’s just horrible.”
The water lines are vital to keeping his livestock alive. McMullan has started leaving his barn open and food out to stop the migrants from breaking in, he told The Post Thursday.
“Our leadership has gone berserk, they have no clue what’s going on down here. The general public has no clue,” McMullan said.
“You need to get Kamala Harris and Joe Biden down here and make them pick up all the trash them people are leaving… It’s their fault. Nobody’s scared of Joe Biden. They were scared of Trump.
“They weren’t about to get caught over here then. Now that Biden’s opened the floodgates, it’s going to be hard to close them.”
https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/terrell-county-texas-sees-540-increase-in-border-human-smuggling/
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