South Texas: Brooks County Battling Border Crime

Brooks County, Texas is a less than five-hour drive from Houston, but the rural community of just over 7,200 people is facing an overwhelming amount of crime.

High-speed chases, smugglers and a rising body count has become a fact of life in a county made up largely of ranchers and farmers.

“We have a lot to contend with,” said Brooks County Chief Deputy Urbino Martinez. “It takes a toll.”

Houston’s connection to this rise in crime can be clearly seen in the 250 cars kept in the sheriff’s office’s impound lot.

“There’s criminal acts involving every vehicle that’s here,” said Martinez.

Martinez said 95 percent of the cars the county has seized this year as part of human, drug and weapons smuggling were originally stolen out of the Houston area.

“The connection between us and Houston, it’s almost like you would have to say ‘neighboring,’” said Martinez.

In addition to Martinez and Sheriff Rey Rodriguez, Brooks County has only four full-time patrol deputies and one investigator to cover 944 square miles of highway, back roads and ranch land.

Martinez said deputies have to work 12-hour shifts to keep up with all the crime running through the county.

“Whether it’s human smuggling, drug smuggling, or both at the same time, it’s phenomenal,” said sheriff’s investigator Daniel Davila. “They are coming in droves.”

Brooks County averages two high-speed chases every day involving either drugs or human smuggling.

This year, the county is also contending with 60 missing person cases and 116 bodies of illegal immigrants found murdered or dead from exposure.

Sheriff’s office records show the number of bodies found in Brooks County in 2012 has more than doubled from 2011.

“The waste of human life, it makes no sense how people are dying out here,” said Davila. “I can only imagine the bodies that are out there that we have yet to discover.”

In addition to tying up scant law enforcement resources, the rising number of bodies found in the county is also a financial burden to taxpayers.

Sheriff’s officials said it costs the county between $1,200 and $1,500 per body.

That cost includes investigation, sending each body to another county for autopsy and, in some cases, burying the individuals in the county’s cemetery.

“We got maybe 40 unnamed graves out there,” said Martinez.

Brooks County is about 75 miles north of the border, but crime is funneling into the area because of geography.

Davila explained many smugglers make it across the border with people or drugs and then fan out into dense ranch lands to avoid border patrol checkpoints along the highway.

The Sheriff’s office contends with so much crime on a daily basis it has had to supplement its annual budget with money from seized assets.

Records show the sheriff’s office’s actual budget for 2011-2012 was $620,186.90.

Records also show the office had to spend an additional $387,834 from asset seizure funds just to maintain daily operational costs.

“We’re not going to stop just because we don’t have the resources,” said Davila. “The pay is lousy, and it may sound corny, but this is my home. This is where I like to be, this is where I want to be, this is where I want to try to make things a little bit better.”

While it still receives some federal funding through partnerships with surrounding counties, the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office recently lost its state Border Star funding for the quarter.

Martinez explained that with only a staff of three administrators, who also handle calls for help and take missing persons reports, the office couldn’t keep up with all the paperwork required to secure the grant.

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Falfurrias, Texas: Smugglers taking toll on South Texas

FALFURRIAS, Texas – After several hours of surveillance, the pursuit was on. A smuggler loaded down with illegal immigrants in an SUV last month tried to outrun a trail of law enforcement vehicles, with more waiting up ahead on Highway 281 north of Falfurrias.

Finally, yanking his vehicle onto the shoulder, stopping short of a landowner’s fence, the smuggler’s human cargo bailed out, running into the brush, followed closely by sheriff’s deputies from Brooks and Jim Wells County, and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

“We’re doing it with the manpower that we have and that’s where it hurts,” said Capt. Joe Martinez, of the Jim Wells Sheriff’s Office. “We don’t have the manpower.”

According to Susan Durham, executive director of the South Texans’ Property Rights Association, most counties do not get federal funding for more manpower, unlike those that are within 25 miles of the border.

“There’s already funds in place for them,” Durham said. “But that’s not where the border is anymore.”

Durham said landowners often are being overrun by smugglers who crash through fences and gates, going cross-country from ranch to ranch, usually in stolen trucks.

She said just in the past eight months, several ranches in Jim Wells and Brooks counties have seen 24 bailouts.

Each incident has averaged $540 in repairs to fences and gates, Durham said.

“Now if they compensate the people right away, it would be a lot different,” said Raul Garcia, a longtime rancher.

After at least two bailouts on his property, Garcia said he was warned he would be prosecuted if he shot anyone.

Garcia said he’s heard other ranchers are putting spikes facing traffic on their ranch gates.

“They try to ram them, they’ll bust the radiator,” Garcia said.

Durham said her organization helped revise the state’s transportation code to reimburse landowners for the property damage.

She said the money initially would have been excess funds from the sale of abandoned vehicles.

“Excess means what’s left over after paying expenses such as towing and storage,” Durham said.

But Durham said there’s been a snag in the funding for the program that would have used Brooks County as a template for the rest of South Texas.

“Smugglers are gaming the system by using vehicles that are stolen or that have high liens on them,” Durham said.

She said they also use the “innocent friend excuse,” telling authorities they loaned the vehicle to a friend unaware it would be used for smuggling.

As a result, Durham said her organization will go back to the Texas Legislature, and even ask the federal government for help.

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