By Karen Gleason
Part Four of a Multi-Part Series
It doesn’t take much to die in the Rio Grande.
Standing on its banks in southernmost Val Verde County, much of the area could be mistaken for a nature preserve: There are green things growing everywhere, a hundred birds are singing, and the sun glints and dazzles from the surface of the wide ribbon of cool water flowing through it.
But appearances can be deceiving. A misstep into a hole on the river’s bed, invisible from the surface, a slip on an algae-covered rock, a fall into current that is much stronger and faster than it looks, and suddenly you’re in a duel to the death with the river, and it’s a duel the river sometimes wins.
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin L. Skero told the 830 Times this week, “People think that this river is safe and easy to cross, but it’s not. There’s an undercurrent there, and a lot of folks that are coming across don’t know how to swim, and they lose their footing in the silt or gravel bottom and the current catches them. A lot of times they can’t get back up to the surface, and we do have a lot of drownings out here, so we’re trying to mitigate that as much as we can.”
Skero oversees Border Patrol operations in the agency’s 47-county Del Rio Sector, where the Rio Grande and Lake Amistad form the southern boundary between the U.S. and Mexico.
For several weeks now, journalists from around the country and around the world have converged in a small meadow that forms a short corridor between the Rio Grande and dusty South Vega Verde Road, just north of a house known as the former Bordelon residence.
The journalists filmed, photographed and interviewed dozens of immigrants who have splashed through the Rio Grande and clambered onto the Texas banks in this area.
The area became such a crossing hot spot that Skero said he spoke about it during conversations with officials in Mexico.
“We communicate daily with our partners in the government of Mexico, and we ask them to come down and do mirrored patrols with us in many places, and in places like there, the former Bordelon house, we asked them to come to the south side (of the Rio Grande) and help us mitigate all this traffic that’s coming across,” Skero said.
“Now understand that the government of Mexico has priorities, as we do, and sometimes they can come and sometimes they can’t. But they have been down there over the past several days to help us mitigate the number of people that are coming across the border there,” the chief patrol agent added.
Skero noted his agents have rescued 1,100 persons in the Del Rio Sector so far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2020.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had 42 people die, through drownings and exposure,” Skero said.
When this reporter observed that the Rio Grande seemed easier to cross in the area beyond the former Bordelon house, Skero said his agents have worked drownings “right there in that area.”
“This river can fool you very easily, regardless of where you are, and we want to make sure we’re there and available to receive all of these folks, because they’re coming, and we have an obligation to process them,” Skero said.
Next: The Border Patrol looks to the future
