By Karen Gleason
Part One of a Multi-Part Series
The rising tide of illegal immigrants flowing across the Rio Grande has swept the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol here into new and uncharted waters.
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin L. Skero told the 830 Times Monday the situation currently faced by Border Patrol agents in the 47-county Del Rio Sector is “unprecedented.”
Skero spoke to the 830 Times on the lush green banks of the Rio Grande in an area close to where Border Patrol agents launch and recover the powerful air boats they use to patrol the river, which forms the boundary between the United States and Mexico in southern Val Verde County.
“It’s super-busy for us right now. The Del Rio Sector specifically is what I’ll talk about, and we’ve never seen anything like this in the Del Rio Sector,” Skero said.
“Historically, here in Del Rio, we’ve always had enough traffic to keep folks busy. I was an agent out here in the late ’90s, in Comstock, and loved the work here. This is where agents came to learn the craft of being a Border Patrol agent: sign cutting, pulling tire drags, chasing groups of migrants through the brush, and sometimes we would chase them for two or three days.
“Fast-forward to today, and we’ve seen groups of 126. Our numbers here are nothing like we’ve ever seen. Just yesterday (Sunday), we caught over 930 people, in one day,” Skero said.
The huge numbers have created a new reality for Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector.
“What we caught yesterday (930 individuals) are what we would have caught in a couple of months when I was a young agent,” Skero said.
Skero admitted the sky-high numbers of illegal immigrants make the day-to-day work of the agents frustrating.
“It’s frustrating to be overwhelmed. We don’t have the resources to deal with this alone. Luckily, our partners are fantastic. All of our sheriff’s offices, police departments, Texas Parks and Wildlife, our Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers, the National Park Service, they’ve all come to our aid. They’ve been a huge help.
“It’s frustrating that we can’t get to all of the traffic, so we’re inundated with this surge of humanity that’s hitting us here in these local areas like Del Rio and Eagle Pass. It overwhelms our resources, so we’re dealing with processing, care and detention, meanwhile we’ve got large groups getting away from us on the flanks,” Skero said.
Next: Where do they all go?
