The survey also won’t guarantee disaster relief assistance.
“Without hesitation, these agents responded to the ranch house and safely secured the location, the stolen weapons and the undocumented non-citizens,” Big Bend Sector Chief Patrol Agent Sean L. McGoffin said in a statement Wednesday.
And Abbott’s announcement comes after Texas sheriffs have reported that illegal immigrants have intentionally damaged property along the border—something they haven’t done during past surges.
Coe said that property owners have reported fences being cut “because they’re hauling dope or small kids or something.”
“But we’ve never seen the intentional big four-by-four holes in the fence, or now, a 10-foot section just cut completely out. That’s really starting to bother me,” he added during an interview in mid-June.
“It’s all just out of spite, I think,” Coe said of the damage being wrought along the border.
Border Patrol officials said that more than 180,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in May 2021. Republicans have pointed to the surge in illegal immigration as a result of the Biden administration’s policies, including executive orders that rescinded the Trump administration’s stricter immigration rules.
Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco noted that property owners and ranchers along the border are now being forced to carry firearms. In one instance, the sheriff said, a resident told him that he held an illegal alien at gunpoint, but the man wouldn’t back down.
“And [the resident] finally had to cock the hammer back and say, ‘Hey, you take a step further, then things are gonna change here,'” Nolasco told The Epoch Times. “That’s the last thing I want to hear—that we have a shooting, [that] we have somebody that had to kill somebody … I hope it never happens.”