Don’t Tell This Texas County That Illegal Border Crossings Are ‘Down’

Credulous media outlets continue to parrot the Biden administration’s specious claim that illegal entries at the southern border are “down 70 percent” since Title 42 public-health protocols were lifted. FAIR exposed that statistical sleight of hand, which simply re-categorizes border crossers and opens “new legal pathways” for them into the U.S.

Meantime, migrant “gotaways” who evade capture – estimated to number at least  1.7 million since January 2021 — continue to barge into the country between border ports of entry. A recent news report examined how a small Texas county is being overrun by increasingly brazen illegal aliens.

Kinney County, wedged between Eagle Pass and Del Rio, placed cameras at various spots along its 16-mile border with Mexico. In the first six months of this year, they detected a whopping 29,000 migrants walking into the county. (Kinney County’s total population is 3,120.)

“To our knowledge, none have been apprehended, and their whereabouts today are unknown,” Sheriff Brad Coe said.

Ben Binnion, an area rancher, recalled that back in 2014, Border Patrol apprehended 37 migrants crossing his land. “I’m getting 200 people a night on average on my trail cameras for two years solid now.” He has encountered migrants from as far away as Congo, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and China on his land.

Binnion said he’s had to hire a full-time employee to mend fences and pick up trash. “That’s literally all he does,” said the rancher who likened the work to putting a “Band-Aid on a bullet.” He estimates that migrants have damaged his property to the tune of $800,000 in the past two years.

While U.S. Border Patrol agents are tied down with paperwork at their stations, the state of Texas has spent some $4 billion building up its Operation Lone Star border enforcement program. OLS-deployed officers have apprehended 394,200 illegal aliens since 2021. But as those individuals are turned over to Border Patrol for “processing,” there is little or no expectation they will be removed from the country.

More significantly, OLS efforts have led to more than 31,300 criminal arrests of illegal aliens, resulting in some 29,100 felony charges. Additionally, Texas has toughened penalties on human smugglers. Prosecutors no longer have to prove that alleged smugglers were paid, which was often the reason cases were thrown out of court.

In 2020, Kinney County deputies made 169 arrests for human smuggling. As of July, the tally topped 500. But even these rising apprehensions and prosecutions are not keeping pace.

As desk-bound Border Patrol busily processes aliens into the U.S., gotaways who likely represent the most dangerous and lawless migrants are making life miserable for residents of Kinney County. And it doesn’t stop there.

Sheriff Coe, who served as a Border Patrol officer for 31 years, said his experience tells him things will only worsen. With the Biden administration essentially standing down at the border, bogus asylum seekers and gotaways alike “are just going to keep coming,” he says.

And they’re not stopping at Kinney County.