Crime exacerbates political tensions
Texas | May 4, 2021
COTULLA, Texas — About 300 yards from the LaSalle County courthouse on Main Street is a fenced-in lot packed with stolen pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans that were mostly stolen in major cities and gutted of their seats by smugglers looking to transport migrants who illegally crossed the border. Some of the vehicles were hastily painted white to blend in with vehicles headed to oil fields.
Although Cotulla is dozens of miles from the border, it is close to a Border Patrol checkpoint that smugglers try to avoid by using back roads, going off-road, crashing through ranch fences and driving dangerously fast before crashing or abruptly stopping, the doors of the vehicle then flying open and people dispersing in all directions.
Some degree of illegal immigration, human smuggling and organized crime has long been part of life in mesquite country, especially along the busy Interstate 35 corridor, but South Texas law enforcement officials say it has increased in recent weeks, and hazardous high-speed chases have become a routine occurrence in rural communities. Tiny law enforcement agencies, such as the one here in LaSalle County, act as a second layer of a border enforcement apparatus that tries to stop smugglers, drugs and undocumented immigrants before they disappear into big cities.
This increase has worried many local residents, and the debate over possible solutions often plays out on the Facebook pages of sheriff’s and police departments, with views falling along already tense political lines. LaSalle County, where more than 87 percent of residents identify as Hispanic, has long been led by Democrats. But in the 2020 election voters backed Donald Trump, making him the first Republican presidential candidate in at least three decades to win the county.
Anyone who has lived in South Texas in the past 30 years can wax poetic about giving water to parched “walkers” or migrants of years ago, usually single men from Mexico looking for work. But the past four years of border policies makes this feel different, residents of different political persuasions say. They are afraid that the border-crossers evading capture at the river — often while the Border Patrol is busy processing large numbers of migrant families and unaccompanied children — are ending up in the back of smugglers’ stolen cars and threatening their safety.
But the question of what should be done divides residents, with many conservatives blaming the increase in crime on the Biden administration’s approach at the border and too much compassion for migrants arriving in the United States, while many liberals — including local elected leaders — countering that the increase is the expected result of increased patrolling and attention to the border.
(Excerpts from The Washington Post)