By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin says his small city is plagued with problems being caused by ongoing waves of immigrants crossing illegally from Mexico.
McLaughlin spoke about his city’s troubles while he was in Del Rio to attend a press conference hosted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Oct. 12. Uvalde is located about 70 miles east of Del Rio.
“Yesterday (Monday) I was in Brackettville, in Kinney County, at the round table meeting with Attorney General Paxton and his staff, talking about some of the problems we all are facing with this immigration surge,” McLaughlin said.
“Ours is not the same as y’all’s here in Del Rio; ours is the ‘got-aways,’ the ‘get-aways,’ the people that are walking around cutting our ranchers’ fences. They’re trashing houses. Our crime rate is up in Uvalde. I’m not saying 100 percent of it is from the migrants, but it’s up considerably,” the mayor added.
McLaughlin said he believes the increase in criminal activity in Uvalde is due at least in part to the immigrant surge.
“I believe it, and so does my sheriff and the chief of police. We think at least part of it is the migrants coming through and trying to break into places,” McLaughlin said.
He said the biggest problem recently, though, has been what he calls “bailouts.”
“At first, our problem was high-speed chases, and we were having three or four of those every day. Now we’ve got the chases stopped, but they come into town, and we run the license plates or DPS runs the license plates, and they don’t match the car. Then they speed up for two blocks, and everybody in the car bails out, and you’ve got 10 or 12 people that were in the car now running through town,” he said.
“We’ve had to put our schools on lockdown 48 times this year since Jan. 1, so this (new) school year, every school has officers in it. The school district went out and hired more police officers, and now they’re at every school,” McLaughlin added.
McLaughlin said he traveled west to tell Paxton about the problems his community is facing.
“My concern is, what are we going to do to stop this? With the surge you all had here in September, we were wide open. There wasn’t a Border Patrol agent to be found in Uvalde. They even shut the checkpoint down,” McLaughlin said.
He said there are also issues with immigrants “riding the rails” east after they cross the border illegally.
“We have the trains that we stop in Uvalde every day, and we’re getting anywhere from 10 to 50 (immigrants) a day. On some days, 100. And now we’re finding out that some of those people are pedophiles, rapists, murderers. They’re coming back on that train, and thankfully, Border Patrol is catching most of those people, but we really can’t get any information about what they’re doing with those people, where they’re taking them, and that’s concerns us,” the mayor said.
“We’re not against immigration, but there’s a right way to do it, and the way we’re doing it, the way this administration is letting it take place, is wrong,” McLaughlin said.
The Uvalde mayor said he would like to see Texas Gov. Greg Abbott completely shut down the border to bring awareness to the problems border communities are confronting.
After Paxton’s press conference, during which he spoke, McLaughlin said he believes the governor and the attorney general are genuinely concerned about the border.
“I learned a new perspective of what the attorney general can do and can’t do, and what I can tell you, he is using every arrow in his quiver to try and hold this administration in check because we have laws that have been on the books for many years, but this administration is avoiding them,” he said.
McLaughlin said he believes Paxton and his staff listened to his concerns, adding, “At least I believe now there is someone who is going to try and hold this administration accountable.”
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