By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Clint McDonald, executive director of the Southwest Border Sheriffs Coalition/Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, said he believes a meeting between former President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and a group of border sheriffs in Weslaco last week was productive.
McDonald, himself a former Texas sheriff, stopped at the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office Friday on his way home to Ft. Davis and spoke to the 830 Times about the border meeting.
“I’ve just returned from the round table/town hall and border fence tour that we did with President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott in Weslaco,” McDonald said.
“We had the round table first,” McDonald said, adding the group listened to presentations from two Texas sheriffs, then an address from Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steve McGraw.
Following those speeches, McDonald said, the group listened to talks by Abbott and Trump.
“We had about a 40-minute discussion,” McDonald said.
“The Tarrant County Sheriff was concerned with the rise in deaths in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area from fentanyl that’s coming across our border. The Brooks County Sheriff was concerned with the number of deaths they’re having in his county, migrants that are passing away there, and he’s one county over from the southern tip of the Rio Grande Valley, and they’re dying of everything from exhaustion to snakebites, everything that can happen to people out there, because they’re getting into that real thick brush to try and circumvent the checkpoints,” McDonald said.
McDonald was asked if the sheriffs expressed to him if they felt the round table event was productive?
“Yes, anytime sheriffs are able to get with their peers and colleagues and discuss what’s going on, and they realize that the same thing is happening in every county along the border, yet every county is unique, so yes, they feel they gain something every time they get together and interact and discuss their concerns one on one,” McDonald said.
McDonald stopped off here Friday to visit with Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez and to tour the soft-sided processing center that has been erected in the parking lot between the sheriff’s office and the county detention center.
McDonald said Trump and Abbott are on the same page in regards to border security.
“I think their message was pretty clear . . . what they want to do, restarting building the fence, finishing that project, as President Trump said, it’s been paid for, but it’s not being finished,” McDonald said.
He noted the group, including Trump and Abbott, toured a portion of the border where a 200-yard section of the planned fence is unfinished.
“There’s a big gap there, and that’s what the immigrants are using to come through now, and we’re feeling now that we’re kind of victims of circumstance because the fence is there, and it has been paid for, but it’s not even finished,” McDonald said.
He added Trump joked to those attending the tour that the fence should be painted black because it would get so hot during the day that no one could touch it.
“I do think it was a productive meeting, especially since it allowed the sheriffs to interact and talk about what’s going on in their counties,” McDonald said.
Asked if the conflicting goals of the Republican governor and a Democratic president put border sheriffs in an untenable situation, McDonald said, “It puts a lot of people stuck in the middle. I work for both Republican and Democrat sheriffs, and I walk that fence every day – and I don’t want it painted black or it will be too hot for me to walk on – but that’s just the way it is, anytime you have a situation like this, when one political faction is at odds with the other political faction, you’re going to have a lot of people stuck in the middle, and that’s just the collateral damage.”
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