By Karen Gleason
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin L. Skero said Border Patrol agents in the sector are hunkering down to deal with the border crisis “one month at a time.”
Skero spoke to the 830 Times about how the men and women of the Border Patrol’s 47-county Del Rio Sector are dealing with the sharp increases in the number of immigrants crossing the Texas border from Mexico.
“We’re doing everything that we can to mitigate the problem. Again, it’s an all-of-law-enforcement approach to all of this, to try and get more people attacking the problem. I will tell you that this (May) is our second month in a row where we’ve caught over 20,000 people in a single month, so we’re at almost 22,000 this month. We’re increasing 1,000 (people) a month right now, it seems like,” Skero said.
“We had a thousand (people) more in April than we had in March. So I guess instead of one day at a time, you could call it one month at a time,” he added.
The flow of migrants continues to increase and shows no signs of letting up.
“We’re dealing with this problem that doesn’t seem to be slowing down for us here in Del Rio. We saw a right around 8% increase in April from March. Nationally, we saw about a 3% increase, from April to March, so the problem in some areas may be leveling out, but here in the Del Rio Sector, we’re seeing a constant increase,” Skero said.
The chief said the men and women of the Border Patrol see the current surge as a human problem, but cautioned the men, women and families making their way across the border in hopes of a better life are concealing a darker tide in their midst.
“What I would like folks to understand and the story that I would like for you to tell, we do have this surge of humanity coming at us, we do, and as Border Patrol agents, as mothers and fathers, as grandfathers and grandmothers, we have an obligation to take care of everyone that we find in our custody, and so we’re dealing with that.
“While we’re dealing with that, we’ve got human smuggling organizations moving people on our flanks. This is where you’re hearing about the pursuits, about people being put into trunks of cars, being put into tractor-trailers, being put into false floors on flatbed trailers with heavy equipment stacked on top of them, so we’re seeing all of this going on on our flanks,” Skero said.
This, the chief said, is where the Border Patrol is seeing alarming increases in the numbers of criminals making their way into the country.
“In these groups are people who have no intention whatsoever of giving up. They’re trying to get away from us, (and that is) where we’re finding a lot of criminals. The number of folks that we’ve arrested so far this fiscal year, with criminal records, like gang affiliations, sex offenders, are through the roof, over a 2,000% increase.
“These are the folks that we’re working hard to get to, but we’re dealing with all of this in the center, in the urban areas. Our partners are invaluable: Uvalde County, Zavala County, Maverick, Val Verde, Edwards, Real, even as far up as Sutton and Kimble counties. All of these counties are helping us get a handle on all of this stuff,” Skero said.
“Any resources that we can get on board to help us are tremendous assets to us. Texas DPS has been phenomenal to try to help us get a handle on the smuggling cases,” the chief added.
“I do want your readers to also know that we work very hard to get to every single call. When someone calls us and tells us they have five babies abandoned on the river, we’re going to drop what we’re doing, and we’re going to get there. We have to. We have an obligation to make sure to take care of all these folks.
“I did read some articles about this last situation we had around Normandy (where a landowner found five young girls on his farm), that was an awful situation. I can understand the frustration of these families. I absolutely get it, and I understand the anger that they have about this happening on their land, but I want them to understand that we’re trying our best to get to all of these calls,” Skero said.
“In that particular case, it was stated that it took us three hours to get there. It actually only took us about 30 minutes to get there. Once the constable called us and got us on the way, we were there. But I know how that seems.
“Our agents deal with this every day. Our agents are sometimes waiting 30 minutes for transport, and it feels like an hour. They find children like this every day, and they’re waiting for someone to come, for transport to come, for medics to come, for someone to take a look at them. It seems like three hours because it is an awful situation and none of our landowners should be put into this situation, and we’re working hard to resolve it, to mitigate it,” Skero said.
