Dressed in faded jackets and jeans, looking scruffy and unkempt, the elite group of the Texas Department of Public Safety's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) mingle among undocumented migrants crossing the border from Mexico to United States to identify and arrest human traffickers.
These secret agents face death every day due to the danger of being discovered, which is why they receive special training that allows them to hide their identity while chasing criminals.
Migrants wait at the border, near Arizona, in this file photo from August 23, 2022.Gregory Bull / AP
But its mission is so secret that few details about its operation have emerged: the exact number of officers that make up this unit, their profiles or the areas where they mainly operate are unknown.
"We can't really say anything," Matthew Mull, a major with the DPS Criminal Investigation Division in El Paso, Texas, told the New York Post.
Confidentiality is the maximum premise to guarantee the safety of the police.
Their mission is to blend in with the hordes of migrants crossing the border to identify and apprehend cartel members, human smugglers and drug traffickers as part of the state of Texas' efforts to keep criminal elements out of the United States.
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Blending in with newcomers is a key, but delicate, task in order to deceive traffickers, who have years of experience trying to outwit law enforcement to smuggle both people and substances into the country.
This same week, a group of secret agents managed to arrest two smugglers who had transported more than a dozen migrants in a Jeep, in a joint operation with members of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). .
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The officers of the elite group managed to reach the hideout where both were hiding wearing jeans and hooded jackets.
"We couldn't tell who were the migrants and who were the officers. It wasn't until they opened their jackets that I saw their [police] badges. None of them spoke," said a Post reporter who witnessed the raid.
"They were gray-haired and weather-beaten guys, who seemed to have seen it all. Tough guys," the journalist said.
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The CID agents are in stark contrast to the DPS, who wear tan uniforms,
cowboy
hats, and shiny black boots.
“This is how they like to dress,” Mull told the Post.
"It's the typical way of doing business."
The CID unit was started during World War II under the name of Criminal Law Enforcement.
But in 2009 it was renamed when the DPS itself underwent a thorough review and focused its mission on collecting intelligence information on different areas, one of them crime on the border.
A group of migrants wait by the border wall as a Border Patrol agent conducts a count in Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 21, 2022. Dario Lopez-Mills / AP
Its agents work on both sides of the border to "investigate, disrupt, and/or dismantle drug trafficking organizations, human trafficking, and criminal gangs," according to this department on its website.
The massive crossings of undocumented migrants in recent weeks complicate their operations.
On December 12 alone, more than 1,000 people entered the United States irregularly through El Paso in a few hours, after crossing the Rio Grande River from the Mexican city of Juárez in a group.
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This crossing marked a milestone in Texas history and occurred at a time of saturation in Border Patrol facilities and non-governmental shelters, which favors the activity of human trafficking organizations and drug cartels.
The end of Title 42 initially set for December 21, but temporarily suspended by the Supreme Court at the request of 19 states governed by the Republican Party, also encouraged the influx of people who want to apply for asylum in the United States.
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Consequently, November broke the record for crossings with 233,000 people intercepted by the authorities and thousands of people crowding both sides of the border, favoring the actions of criminal groups.
