"We are working as hard as we can," says the sheriff of Kinney County, a small Texas territory along the Mexican border with just 3,700 residents (mostly Latino).
There the authorities patrol 12 hours a day to enforce the order of the governor, Greg Abbot, and detain as many undocumented immigrants as possible under the charge of trespassing, thus covering what, in the opinion of the Republican politician, he has stopped doing as should the federal government chaired by Democrat Joe Biden.
Of the 630 immigrants who remained detained by the Texas authorities in this effort last week, 440 were from Kinney despite having only 16 miles of border and a tiny criminal justice system.
"With people running and chasing animals away, they do not appear where they are supposed to be and people are not making the money they could be making," the sheriff justified his crusade against immigrants, which he considers a danger to the economy County (based in part on hunting exotic animals).
[The governor of Texas announces that he will build a wall on the border with Mexico]
Carrying handguns in public without the need for a license is now legal in Texas
Sept.
1, 202100: 23
Why Kinney?
A freight train passes through there, passing through apparently placid ghost towns where
Texas
Rangers
are posted to stop immigrants who, after crossing the border, jump in wagons to get away within the United States.
They are accused of trespassing on the property of the railroad company, according to the Texas Tribune newspaper, and they are transferred to a state prison recently emptied by the governor to occupy it with illegal immigrants.
[Immigration does not increase crime in the United States, as the Texas Government falsely points out to justify a border wall]
Texas Governor Greg Abbott during a discussion on public safety and law enforcement in January 2021 in Austin, Texas.
AP |
Eric GayAP / AP
[The first 10 migrants are incarcerated in the prison that Texas emptied for those who cross the border without authorization]
"It's just an invasion," county sheriff Brad Coe told the newspaper, echoing conservative anti-immigrant rhetoric.
"The fear is that we do not know who these people are," he adds, "we do not know if they have a criminal record."
TVerifica, the data verification unit of Noticias Telemundo, denied that there was a relationship between crime and immigration, citing studies that show, for example, that the crime rate among people who were born in other countries and come to the United States is "significantly lower "than the overall crime rate for Americans, and for second-generation immigrants.
At least 155 immigrants have thus spent weeks locked up in Briscoe state jail, without access to lawyers, mostly accused of trespassing.
In the sheriff's opinion, that will make them think twice about entering the country illegally.
However, activists and Democratic politicians denounce that these arrests do not respond to a public safety problem but to xenophobic and racist policies against Hispanic immigrants.
Upon being released after serving their sentence, these immigrants find themselves in limbo, since in most cases the Customs and Border Control Service (ICE) does not take care of them because They have not committed a serious crime, and they cannot go to the Border Patrol to initiate their asylum procedures and be able to legalize their status in the country.
With information from The Texas Tribune, CBSN Dallas and AP