By Karen Gleason
Val Verde County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. has declared a local state of disaster because of the county’s ongoing immigrant crisis.
Owens filed the disaster declaration Friday after Val Verde County Commissioners Court approved it May 3.
Owens said in an interview Friday he followed the lead of other regional county judges, especially County Judge Tully Shahan of neighboring Kinney County, who have filed similar disaster declarations for their own counties.
“The health, life and property of the residents of Val Verde County is under an imminent threat of disaster from the human trafficking occurring on our border with Mexico. The ongoing border crisis has resulted in thousands of immigrants invading Val Verde and overwhelming our local, state and federal law enforcement,” the declaration reads.
“The continual violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity has resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars to residents of Val Verde and by the end of our fiscal year will cost the county over a half a million dollars,” the declaration continues.
Owens on Friday told the 830 Times the financial impact to Val Verde County will come largely as the result of the increased numbers of human smugglers being jailed by county and state law officers.
“We had a conversation in the beginning of March with the sheriff, and what we were seeing was the amount of people the Texas Department of Public Safety, the troopers, were catching. The immigrants we can send to Border Patrol, but we get to keep the smugglers, so we started putting numbers together and the way the county’s contract works with the jail, we get so many beds, and after that we have to pay for them,” Owens explained.
He said 110 beds at the county detention facility, operated by the GEO Group, are allotted for local, county and state prisoners.
“After that we pay a fee for each prisoner, so we were running in the 132 to 137 range, and it’s gone higher, since the beginning of March,” he said.
“So I took an average of about 25 (over the 110 allotment), and calculated it from the beginning of March, and with the dollars that we pay and the dollars that we lose because I don’t get to let GEO use (those beds), not only was I not getting the money from GEO, now I’m having to pay. We ran the numbers . . . and through the end of the fiscal year, I’m looking at $30,000 short of half a million (dollars),” Owens said.
“The governor’s brought more troopers to our area, and they’re doing such a good job, but at the end of the day, it’s costing me more money,” he added.
Owens said since the beginning of March, the county sheriff’s office has dealt with more than 1,000 immigrants. As an example, he said, on Wednesday, sheriff’s office deputies waited with a group of 88 individuals.
Owens said the emergency declaration is “a cry for help.”
“The declaration was written because we’re going to need help, and by help, I mean money. At the end of the day, it’s all about the money,” Owens said.
“We need help. It’s as simple as that, and on their side, the state needs to ask to federal government for help. Me asking the federal government, I don’t carry such a big stick, but Texas as a whole does, and the governor needs to ask for help,” he said.
Owens said the persons arrested by DPS troopers would also cost the county more money as the cases against them work their way through the local criminal justice system.
“It’s just a snowball effect,” he said.
“It’s a crisis, and if people don’t believe that, they need to come down here,” Owens said.
“I try to simplify stuff, and I know you can’t fix a leak when the water’s still running. If you stop them or send them back, you can try to develop a policy, but what we’re doing right now, in my humble opinion as the county judge, you can’t fix the problem when we’re letting so many people in. It’s just not possible. You’re trying to send people back who have been here for 10, 15, 20 years, but yet the other door is letting more and more people in. It just doesn’t make sense. You’ve got to turn the water off and then fix the leak,” he said.
