Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. says he’s concerned with the increasing number of foreign migrants lingering in the Del Rio area.
Owens spoke to the 830 Times recently about working with state and city officials for the resumption of state bus runs to transport migrants out of the area. Those buses are now running again.
Owens said his concerns arose after seeing increasing numbers of migrants who seem to be staying in the area instead of quickly moving out.
“This started probably about three weeks ago. These are a different type of people from what we’ve mostly seen in the past. They’re saying they don’t have the money (to travel farther),” Owens said.
The county judge said the state buses, often referred to as “the Abbott buses,” have not been ferrying migrants out of Del Rio for about two months. The buses began running when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began an initiative to ship migrants from Texas border communities to cities in the west, north and east that publicly designated themselves as migrant sanctuary cities.
“We had a meeting with people from the state, from TDEM, the Texas Department of Emergency Management, about three weeks ago, because we’re seeing more and more individuals in our town. These individuals claim that they don’t money to leave, don’t have money for bus fare, so they’ve been staying in our town,” Owens said.
“We’ve had concerns for our constituents, but also for these individuals. They don’t understand that you can’t walk out on Veterans (Boulevard) in the middle of traffic. My concern is for the safety of both the people who live here and the migrants. I don’t want anyone getting run over. But at the end of the day, I don’t represent the immigrants, I represent the people of Val Verde County,” he added.
He said he and city officials met again with TDEM representatives over the last week to iron out details of bringing the state buses back to Del Rio.
“We visited with a couple of individuals from TDEM, and we’ve asked if they would be willing to come back and help and bus some of these individuals out, if the individuals are willing to get on the buses to go to these cities that have declared themselves sanctuary cities, where Abbott’s buses are going, if they would do that, and they said yes,” Owens said.
Owens also acknowledged more of the migrants being seen outside businesses in the area and wandering up and down the city’s main thoroughfare behave differently than those the city has seen over the past four years.
“What I’m hearing today and what I’ve heard for the last couple of weeks is that these individuals just feel like they’re more entitled. . . I’m having hard time, because I really don’t want to offend God and everybody, but at the end of the day, it’s not our responsibility to take care of these people,” the county judge said.
Owens said another facet of the issue is that Del Rioans as a group are caring and compassionate individuals, and he said he has seen families stop and provide meals, blankets and clothing to groups of migrants.
“The problem I see with that is that the more you do, the more will come,” Owens said.
“We’re not heartless, and we can feel bad for them, but when did it become our job to take care of everybody?” he added.
“We’ve had people tell us we should open up a shelter, and I don’t know what the other members of the court would say, but my opinion is you can’t. We’ve already tried that. The city opened up the Joe Ramos, the civic center (on previous occasions), the city went out of its way to help, and what happened? It just brought more people,” Owens said.
Owens also pointed out many of the migrants communicate with each other about places where they’ve found people willing to help them, opening the door for other migrants.
“They have a communication system that is unbelievable. There was lady and two kids that showed up outside the courthouse a couple of months ago, and she was outside the courthouse trying to plug into one of the lamps to charge her phone, and I asked if I could help her and she said she needed to charge her phone to call a taxi,” Owens said.
“So I asked her to come inside the courthouse and we called her a taxi. The next day, we had four men there coming inside the courthouse and asking for help because this lady had pin-dropped us and put out a message saying if you go here, you’re going to get help,” Owens said.
“You can’t be heartless, but the more you do, the more you’ll have to do,” he added.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
