By Karen Gleason
Law enforcement officials in Mexico have begun visible patrols of a popular immigrant crossing area on the Rio Grande.
On Thursday, Val Verde Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez met with journalists from Germany, the United Kingdom and television news teams from Univision and Fox News on the banks of the Rio Grande at the edge of a small meadow that has become a hotspot for immigrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.
Guides accompany groups of immigrants to scrub-covered limestone bluffs above the Rio Grande north of the Ciudad Acuña Industrial Park. The guides herd the migrants down the bluffs along well-worn trails. The guides typically accompany with the migrants at least mid-way through the river, which is relatively shallow and cut by several sand bars in this area.
At some point, the guide or guides turn back to Mexico, and the immigrants make their way through the river to the Texas bank. There, sheriff’s office deputies or Texas Department of Public Safety troopers meet them, direct them to stay in a group and wait with them until a Border Patrol transport van arrives to take the immigrants into custody for processing.
On Thursday morning, as American journalists watched from various perches on the Texas bank of the river, Ciudad Acuña municipal police vehicles and a tan pickup truck carrying men dressed in desert-type camouflage with assault rifles slung from their shoulders began patrolling the bluffs above the area where the migrants typically cross.
After about an hour-and-a-half, the trucks and armed men withdrew, and a group of about a dozen migrants made its way down the sloping bluffs toward the river.
Two of those making the crossing were small children – a boy whose father carried him through the water on his shoulders and an even younger girl who was carried over in a man’s arms.
Martinez and the journalists were waiting for the migrants, and a Border Patrol van stood ready on road beyond the meadow.
As the immigrants made their way across the meadow to the waiting van, they told Martinez they were all from Venezuela.
Border Patrol agents met the immigrants and directed them to place their valuables, paperwork and money inside their backpacks. Each of the migrants was fitted with a paper wristband, and they were loaded into the back of the van.
