A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer told the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) that all federal officers who work along the river are now subject to this “stand-down” attitude for operations.
CIS relates a now increasingly common scene:
“The Border Patrol agents working under the international bridge here got busy fast with ‘processing’ duty after the first three rubber rafts delivered their loads of illegal immigrant families.
But with another raft about to land, the occupied Border Patrol supervisory agent on scene asked a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer to please go over and bring those immigrants in for processing, but to do so with this proviso:
‘Don’t arrest him,’ the supervisor warned about the raft’s paddler, who would soon stand on U.S. soil within arm’s reach of the DPS officer to land the immigrants.”
The state DPS officer explained that another reason Border Patrol agents are not arresting human smugglers is that federal prosecutors simply will not prosecute, but will rather release the smugglers.
“They know [federal prosecutors] won’t prosecute; they’ll let them go,” said the DPS officer as he walked toward the raft of migrants arriving. “Then, he’ll [the boat smuggler] just be right back. The Border Patrol agents won’t do it because they have no backing, none whatsoever. So there’s no use.” Border Patrol agents see arresting the human smugglers as futile.
Along the Rio Grande in southern Texas massive, unchecked numbers of illegal migrants–including unaccompanied minors–have been pouring into the United States, brought by cartel smugglers. This is the “epicenter” for migrants to enter the US and obtain quick legalization ever since the Biden administration has declared that American humanitarian standards demand this course of action.
CIS explains:
“Cartel smuggling groups now essentially hand off these illegal aliens to Border Patrol reception cadres that will then do the administrative paperwork for quick release, as CIS has reported. In this unusual ceasefire, those who were once natural predator and prey connect in a once-embattled no-man’s land with a new mutual objective: keeping the pipeline full and moving human cargo northward into the American interior. . .
“Only a short time ago, those same raft smugglers knew they risked freedom and profits if the agents could lay a hand on them. Alien smuggling is a serious enough federal crime that these cartel workers had to move carefully, shifting on a moment’s notice from cop hot-spots to other crossing areas, where maybe no law enforcement officers lurked. Making sure that smugglers were worried about capture and nervously held back cargoes until a better, less risky time did not stop this flow, but certainly slowed it.”
Now, however, there are reports that smugglers and Border Patrol agents “banter” with each other across the river and that agents stand quietly watching from five or six feet away as smugglers help the illegal aliens in their boat out onto the bank. Essentially, according to the CIS report, smugglers do multiple round trips throughout the day and night and Border Patrol simply directs the illegal migrants to nearby stations for mobile processing. Some Border Patrol agents are angry and unhappy about this situation, claiming that they have basically abdicated protecting the border at all.
As one Customs and Border Protection employee said, “We have ceded the entire battle to the cartels, just given up.”
National Guard troops also at the border are not legally allowed to arrest anyone who is in US territory, and Texas DPS officers have also been told they should not arrest illegal migrants, and they have left that duty to Border Patrol in the past.
