Inside The Illegal Immigration Crisis Just North Of The Border You Haven’t Heard About

Groups like these - single adult migrants attempting to evade law enforcement - are now crossing the border in near-record numbers.

The sparsely populated county is home to one of the largest and busiest of 33 permanent inland Border Patrol checkpoints, which means it's a bottleneck in the northward flow of illegal immigration, and a hotbed of all the problems that come with it.

It's been a bottleneck for decades, ever since Border Patrol built the checkpoint south of town in 1994.

Last week, a group stole a backhoe and used it to break through ranch fences for about 60 miles until they got to U.S. Highway 285, an east-west corridor north of the checkpoint where most groups traveling on foot will get picked up.

The U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint south of Falfurrias, Texas, is one of the largest and busiest inland checkpoints in the country.

It's another aspect of the industrialization of illegal immigration by cartels and smuggling networks, exemplified by wrist-bands and information databases run by cartels on the south side of the Rio Grande and coordinated smuggling operations around border checkpoints further inland.

Along Highway 285 south of the Border Patrol checkpoint, every mile or so you'll see a state trooper parked on the side of the road in what amounts to a massive stakeout.

Miller's part of the ranch in Brooks County sits just south of the checkpoint, which means it's constantly being traversed by groups of illegal immigrants, and has been for years.

Like most of the ranchers in Brooks, Miller allows Border Patrol access to his land to conduct searches and pursuits of illegal immigrants, but it comes with a certain amount of risk.

The work has kept him busy because migrants keep dying on ranches, and every time there's a surge of illegal immigration at the border the body count in Brooks County rises.

"If the group they're with don't take it, then in a follow-up group somebody will almost always takes their stuff, including their ID," says White.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/27/inside-the-illegal-immigration-crisis-just-north-of-the-border-you-havent-heard-about/