Texas Sheriffs Join Forces to Tackle Cartel, Border Crime

Border Patrol agents take into custody several illegal immigrants who were being smuggled from the U.S.–Mexico border to San Antonio, in Brackettville, Texas, on Aug. 26, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Cowboy hats filled a local barbecue restaurant in Brackettville last week as Texas sheriffs convened in a border county that’s being clobbered by human smuggling.

The sheriffs, all from non-border counties, were responding to a call for help from Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe.

“I am requesting any aide [sic] that your county may be able to provide in this border crisis, whether it be manpower, equipment, or operators. This crisis has made all counties a border county,” Coe stated in a letter sent to 40 Texas counties in late January.

Kinney County sits between Del Rio and Eagle Pass and is a main thoroughfare for illegal immigrants trying to get to San Antonio undetected.

“Our homes are being broken into in the middle of the night. The local school district has been forced to erect military barricades around campus to protect students from smugglers evading law enforcement,” Coe said in his letter. “Walking outside on our own property after dark is no longer safe. The residents of Kinney County no longer enjoy the comfort and safety of their own home.”

Law enforcement and emergency medical personnel respond to a crashed smuggling vehicle in Kinney County, Texas, on June 29, 2022. Kinney County Sheriff's Office

After meeting with the sheriffs and other law enforcement officers on Feb. 2, Coe said he was overwhelmed with the support from other counties, including Gonzales, Wilson, Wharton, Refugio, Kingsville, Nixon, and Goliad.

“They saw the need. They know that what’s affecting us today will affect them tomorrow. And that’s what it’s all about,” Coe told The Epoch Times.

Just days earlier, Coe had said, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one that’s fighting this battle.”

Counties offered to lend Kinney County a command trailer, an intel analyst, deputies, and more.

“It’s just like any war, you try to gain control of this spot and then you take it down to the border, regaining control of the border area,” Coe said.

“Once we gain control of that, well the interior can take care of itself. But it all starts at the border. With a little bit of interdiction, a little bit of time, a little effort, a little money, we can push it elsewhere. That’s the ultimate goal—keep it out of Kinney County and then we'll go from there.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had previously sent a letter to counties encouraging them to act as coalitions to “combine their resources and coordinate their activities to successfully protect their residents,” according to Coe.

Bringing Help

Goliad Sheriff Roy Boyd was instrumental in bringing law enforcement together in Kinney County and plans to help with any ongoing operations.

Goliad sits 200 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border, within the corridor to Houston, and Boyd monitors more than a dozen cartel sites within his county.

He and several other sheriffs and police chiefs drove four hours southwest to Kinney County on Feb. 2.

“Before Brad [Coe] even sent out the letter, we'd already been talking about going to help him, because we know he’s overrun,” Boyd told The Epoch Times. “And part of that, to be quite honest, some of that is our own doing.”

In March 2022, Boyd put together a 20-agency task force to dismantle the cartel-run operations in his area that runs from the Rio Grande Valley up to Houston. He said the cartels would smuggle at least 25,000 illegal immigrants through his county per year.

The success in his region pushed cartel operations further west and into Kinney County.

“There were two main groups under the same organization. And in one week, we took down both of those groups,” Boyd said. “ They were in charge of all major smuggling operations, they worked for multiple cartels. And they were also the taxing entities for the cartels.”

Law enforcement officers arrest several illegal immigrants in Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

He commended Abbott and the state Legislature for providing the resources to make it possible.

“Goliad Sheriff’s Office has five additional deputies compared to two years ago, all because of the governor,” Boyd said. “They saw that we were serious about actually accomplishing the mission.”

He also said the prosecution side of the equation is often the weak link, but a federal prosecutor in Corpus Christi is now taking charges on all of the smuggling cases on the federal side, “which they haven’t historically done.”

Human Smuggling

Coe said he’s now working on logistics to get the operation underway as soon as possible.

The number of human smugglers arrested by the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office over the past two years has more than quadrupled. Deputies arrested 741 smugglers in 2022, up from 169 in 2020.

Related are the high-speed vehicle pursuits, which have doubled, causing multiple deaths. In 2022, deputies were involved in 139 vehicle pursuits, up from 61 in 2020.

A Kinney County sheriff's deputy arrests a woman for smuggling illegal immigrants, in Brackettville, Texas, on July 22, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Aside from the human smuggling in vehicles, thousands of illegal immigrants try to evade Border Patrol by walking through the ranches around the inland border highway checkpoints.

During the last nine months of 2022, at least 21,000 suspected illegal aliens were viewed on cameras set up by Kinney County, moving on foot either inside Kinney County or on trails and passages that lead into the county.

“To our knowledge, none have been apprehended, and their whereabouts today are unknown,” the sheriff’s office said.

The population of Kinney County is around 3,100.