By JOE SOUTHERN
news@journal-spectator.com
Anyone who doesn’t believe there is an illegal
immigration crisis at the border need only look at the rising number of
interdiction stops being made on Highway 59 through Wharton County.
“It’s become a serious issue within the last couple
years,” Wharton County Sheriff Shannon Srubar said. “I wouldn’t say every day,
but nearly every day, as long as an officer is out there on the highway, these
types of cases are coming up.”
Srubar didn’t have numbers of arrests readily available,
but said they have risen sharply since he became sheriff in 2017.
“What’s interesting, when I first came into office … we
had a pursuit bailout maybe once every quarter. I mean, it was it was kind of
rare,” he said.
In addition to the rising number of stops and arrests are
the complications that go with them. That includes manhunts for fleeing
suspects, determining immigration status, making arrests, contacting the U.S.
Border Patrol, and transportation of those suspected of being in the country
illegally.
“So, most recently, we’re noticing some trends, that now
it may not be a load of 10, or 12, or 15, it can be one or two illegal aliens
in the vehicle,” Srubar said.
Invariably, whenever a vehicle is pulled over – or
crashes after a pursuit – the occupants make a run for it.
“You can imagine when dealing with these traffic stops,
that it’s all-hands-on-deck,” Srubar said. “And when you have people running
from us, you’re gonna have investigators out there helping locate these
individuals. You’ll have even administration, myself, of course, sometimes a
DPS (Department of Public Safety) chopper, sometimes it may be a drone … every
tool possible that’s available to help solve the issue to make sure we locate
these individuals that decide to run.”
Quite often they are caught, but not always.
“What’s happening is it’s very organized in that there’s
communication when these people run from us,” Srubar said. “I would say within
a few hours they’re being picked up by a second or third car coming down the
road to continue their journey.”
Cartels
Srubar said the human smuggling is being conducted by
cartels, which have become more sophisticated in their operation and
cooperation.
“They’re very organized,” Srubar said. “I was hearing
stories, and this was probably a year ago, cartels were actually putting
armbands on the immigrants to know which cartel they owed when they got to
Houston… It’s unbelievable the amount of organization that’s going on with this
with this issue.”
Heading for Houston
Nearly every local case involves smugglers northbound on
Highway 59 heading from the Mexican border to Houston.
Interdiction Sgt. Alex Rivera said a typical stop begins
when he or another officer notices certain driving patterns or a traffic
violation.
“Usually we conduct the interview with the driver,”
Rivera said. “After that we check for travel itinerary. And then we make
contact with the passengers. And usually when we make contact with passengers,
we find they’ve entered the U.S. illegally. You notice scratches in their arms
and face, dirty clothing. You can smell – it’s like they haven’t bathed in
days, months. You know, so you see all these trends and that’s when we contact
Border Patrol so they interview them at the time.”
Srubar said that a lot of times the stories of the driver
and the passenger don’t match.
“When you start interviewing those people individually,
sometimes the driver won’t even know the other individuals’ names, where
they’re from,” he said. “I mean, anytime you would basically have somebody in
your vehicle you’re gonna know those things. You’re gonna know what the
person’s name is, you’re gonna know where they’re from, whether it’s your
cousin, whether it’s your friend. When you’re interviewing these guys, they
don’t even know each other.”
“So basically you’re asking, ‘who’s with you today?’
‘That’s my cousin.’ ‘Cousin who?’ ‘Cousin Mike.’ ‘What’s Mike’s last name?’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ Just small stuff like that,” Rivera added.
Get the driver
Srubar said when a stop is made, the focus is on the
driver, the one doing the smuggling. The driver will be processed into the
Wharton County Jail and go through the normal procedures in a criminal case.
The Border Patrol will be alerted about each person caught who was being
smuggled. The Border Patrol determines which ones it will take.
“Border Patrol takes the immigrants and processes them on
their end,” said Chief Deputy Jason Mican.
So far, the Border Patrol has taken all of them.
“They’ve taken every one of them that we’ve contacted
them on,” Mican said. “Sometimes we have to drive a distance to get them to
them.”
Financial impact
Srubar said that is where his department feels it in the
wallet. On top of the cost of housing inmates, higher fuel costs make
transporting immigrants expensive.
“It used to be the Border Patrol would come to Wharton
County and pick those individuals up,” Srubar said. “And due to them being as
busy as they are … They can’t come to Wharton County anymore. So we’re now
driving individuals. Sometimes we go all the way to Victoria, even most
recently, sometimes going all the way to Corpus Christi. When Border Patrol
wants to take custody these individuals I’ll be the first to tell you, we’re
going to work with our federal partners. We’re going to work hand-in-hand to keep
our community safe.”
Wharton Police Chief Terry Lynch agreed.
“Every department along the major traffic corridors have
been affected by human trafficking,” Lynch said. “Traffic interactions and
investigations have and will cause a strain on our department resources, but
the alternative of not doing so is unthinkable. Our duty is to protect the
victims and our communities.”
Grants
“At the sheriff’s office we have increased staffing out
on the highways, but that’s due to grant funds,” Mican said.
Srubar said his department has received state and federal
grants to help pay for additional resources, but fuel is not one of them. To
help with fuel expenses, Srubar recently appeared before the Wharton County
Commissioners Court to seek an increase in his budget to accommodate the
expense.
The grants received are from Operation Lone Star, which
is state funded, and Operation Stonegarden, which is federally funded.
Prosecution
Srubar said when an alleged smuggler is arrested, the
case is turned over to the district attorney’s office.
“It’s up to the district attorney’s office to prosecute
or not,” he said.
Assistant District Attorney Mark Racer said so far none
of the alleged smugglers has made it to trial.
“I don’t think we’ve had a trial on a smuggling case
yet,” he said. “The majority of them do plead. We have had a few that the
federal government picked up out of the Southern District of Texas.”
Racer said human smuggling is a third-degree felony.
“We have filed 20 felony smuggling cases since February
of this year … The majority of cases that I see involve at least three to four
illegal aliens being smuggled here,” he said.
Racer said some cases could get bumped up to a higher
degree felony depending on circumstances.
“It depends on what their criminal history is,” he said.
“So you know, every case is different. If they’ve been in prison before, then
we’re looking at two years to 10 years. If they’ve not been in trouble before,
you know, they might likely get probation for it.”
Drugs
Srubar said the big issue with the cartels used to be
drug smuggling. While that is still going on, smuggling humans has become much
more lucrative.
“The cartels are making millions off everything,” he
said.
Border crisis
Srubar and his officers are no strangers to the crisis on
the border. They’ve seen it first-hand.
“We’ve recently sent these guys down for training down on
the border,” Mican said. “They attended a smuggling course, which deals with
different forms of smuggling, human smuggling, smuggling narcotics and so
forth. The whole interdiction team went down there and trained on the border.”
“I went to McAllen several times,” Srubar said. “But one
of the most interesting places that I’ve gone that really stands out in my
opinion … is Brooks County. It’s a very small county in population and it’s
mostly farmland, ranchland.”
Those fields, however, have been producing dead bodies as
the crisis deepens.
“I want to say it was like 120 bodies they located in one
year last year on ranches,” Srubar said.
He said there is a checkpoint just south of the county
seat of Falfurrias. The smugglers will let their passengers out a couple miles
before the checkpoint and have them walk around and be picked up a couple miles
past it. Not all of them make it.
“What’s happening is with the heat, with snakebite, with
cold in the winter, whatever, they’re having to endure,” Srubar said. “Some
have no shoes, some have barely any clothes on. I mean, these people are dying,
trying to make their trek around this this border station.”
Human trafficking
Not everyone being smuggled into the country is doing so
of their own volition.
“Another thing that we have run into is trafficking cases
as well,” Mican said. “It’s different than smuggling. Trafficking is where the
individual is going to be used for slave labor, prostitution, and so forth. And
in a couple of their recent cases, it was obvious that had they not stopped
these individuals and taken them into custody and turned them over to Border
Patrol, these individuals were going to be trafficked … It’s pretty obvious
that they we’re going to be used for prostitution. So that kind of saved them
by turning them over the Border Patrol, because it was evident that they were
they were going to be used for trafficking.”
Cooperation
Srubar said it takes a team of law enforcement agencies
to tackle the problem.
“I really appreciate the work with DPS, the troopers that
are stationed here, and our guys that communicate, even with the PDs (police
departments), the communication and working together is unbelievably good,” he
said. “I’ve heard nightmare stories where maybe sometimes some jurisdictions
don’t work together, maybe don’t want to share info or whatever. But I will
tell you, we are fortunate here because the DPS guys, the PDs, they work
together, and ultimately, when things like this happen, they all come together
to try to help.
“I mean to call DPS chopper out and it be here within 20
minutes. I mean, that’s unbelievable. That’s remarkable. So the relationships
that these guys have been able to establish, I’m extremely proud. It’s been on
them. It ain’t me, it’s them doing it. They’ve established those relationships,
and it’s important. We can’t do it ourselves. We got to work together, there’s
not enough of us.”
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