A Look up DHS's Skirts
And-- some bad news for Kinney County Ranchers
Good morning, friends,
There’s a lot out there on our minds right now. The Ken Paxton impeachment trial is occupying a lot of bandwidth around the state— and to a lesser but still great extent, around the country.
There’s a lot of analysis and coverage out there already— we don’t have much to add, except to note that a lot of folks seem to think prosecutors are doing great— and just as many seem to think the defense are tearing them apart.
So what else is new? We all seem to be inside reverse funhouse mirrors, staring at a deformed reality that the others are all occupying, as they point their fingers back at us, and the only unifying element is a shared dismay and disbelief at what these other jokers think.
One thing that has caught our eye out there, however, are some numbers from the Office of the Inspector General— which apparently got a look up the Department of Homeland Security’s skirts— and what they’ve witnessed was obviously some unshaven and unlaundered foulness.
This almost escaped our attention, but Newsnation’s Ali Bradley caught it, and a subsequent Facebook post reached our eyeballs.
We’re looking at a redacted version of a document examining how DHS is absolutely failing to keep track of the migrants and the children that are entering the US.
Highlights:
One in nearly five migrant records were missing, not valid for delivery, or not legitimate locations.
ICE only bothered to even get addresses 65% of the time.
Phony addresses being used include car dealerships, bus stations, churches, and restaurants.
There’s a whole lot more to go over but think about this: They know these migrants are lying their asses off, and they know they’ll never be able to track them down, and they don’t care.
Isn’t that weird?
These are just the numbers that the Inspector General was able to find— do you think there wasn’t some effort to hide some of this? Or minimize it?
Let’s be real. Human nature tells us that this is just the very tip of the iceberg.
The IG’s Office apparently looked at more than 900K records and files. In 54,000 instances, the addresses were just left blank.
That’s some kind of crazy nonsense, but it gets worse.
80% of addresses were recorded at least twice in an 18-month period.
780 addresses were used more than 20 times.
Seven addresses were recorded more than 500 times. Some of these were other federal agencies and charities.
Since March of 2021, US Border Patrol released more than 127,000 migrants who were later arrested in the US.
29% of migrants don’t bother checking in with ICE once they arrive at their destinations.
And it’s apparently a certainty that ICE may be unknowingly releasing migrants including children to potentially unsafe conditions or smuggling operations.
Number 10 there is cute with how it offers a fig leaf of deniability. “ICE may be unknowingly releasing migrants,” etc. At this point, you think ICE doesn’t realize what they’re doing?
There’s no single organization in or out of the Government that knows better just what exactly they’re doing. What exactly they’re being told to do by their bosses.
It’s why you have whistleblowers out there— blowing their hearts out, talking about the ways they’ve been told to shut up and just get on with things.
And somehow, their complaints are going nowhere. Nothing is being done to improve how the Government is tracking this or put a stop to it. If anything— it’s like they’re trying to accelerate what’s going on.
We keep going back and listening to recent video and audio of New York’s mayor— trying to avoid speaking the whole, hard truth— even as he acknowledges that even the modest amounts of migrants New York City is receiving will destroy the City as most know it. To us— he sounds like someone that’s dying to pass the buck— or put the blame where it should be resting, but just can’t quite bring himself to do it yet. Too cowardly? Too beholden to special interests? Trying not to rock the boat? Who knows.
Somehow, one suspects that if ICE suddenly reversed course and announced it was time for mass deportations, the City of New York and the NYPD would lead the way in forcibly rounding people up for an express trip back to their nations of origin, Sanctuary City or no.
They are learning a valuable lesson: what we are all witnessing right now with these migrants? It is no kindness. It is no favor to them. Despite what they might believe, they would be better off staying home.
Maybe folks just don’t realize it, but there’s no one crossing the river that the Cartels don’t already understand how they’re going to collect their money from.
Pretend for a moment that you are Manuel from Ecuador and you’re on your way to the USA. Jose works for the Cartel del Noreste. And he’s a scary bastard. But as long as you agree and do what he says, he doesn’t treat you the way he’s treating the people who don’t. They get beaten. Pinky fingers get chopped off. Sometimes they’re killed.
Jose tells you that he and his people will get you across the river and you’re going to owe them $3,000. But there’s interest. And they’re going to assess costs in food and costs for transporting you too. But, once you’re in America, you’ll be able to work it off. Easy peasy.
Well, once you’re in America— the Americans tell you, you can’t work— not until your asylum claim is processed and that’s going to take at least 2-to-3 years.
Are you going to sit around letting that interest accrue? Heck no. But you can’t work, not legally.
It’s okay though— Jose’s friend, Pedro, tells you he’s got work. Just take this car back to Texas and pick up some more people and drive them back to wherever. $1,000 dollars a trip, so 3 trips or maybe 4 should take care of everything. Won’t that be nice? C’mon. Easy work. Easy money. Anybody could do it. If you don’t— well, you’re not gonna like what we’re going to do to you.
At this point, skeptical readers might be checking out— this is all made up stuff, after all. And how is anyone going to collect from Manuel when he’s in New York City? Or Tampa? Or Tulsa?
Well, even if the Cartel doesn’t have a Pedro waiting for Manuel in whatever city he’s going to, they know right where his parents are. His brothers and sisters back home. Sometimes, the family home is put up for collateral to the cartel.
So, even if Manuel is relatively free of the cartels, everyone he loves is not.
Like we said— no one crosses the river that the Cartels don’t know how they’re going to collect from.
As we write this, it occurs to us that the Cartels appear to be doing a better job of keeping track of who is entering the United States than Border Patrol and DHS.
Isn’t that weird?
Since we’re all being taxed to death at this point— we may as well just outsource this stuff. Let’s just hire these people to control our border since they already so manifestly are in control.
Bet they’d give us a screaming good deal. We’d just have to ignore the literal enslavement of our fellow man. But we’re doing that already.
Locally, things are getting rougher. There’s no denying it. No getting around it. We haven’t asked anyone to give us permission to say it, or to point it out. But, we’ll take our cue from Chief Deputy Armando Garcia who was briefing Kinney County Commissioners Monday morning about the state of things.
Local ranch owners know it as well as anyone. They may not have access to DPS cameras, but they have their own trail cameras, and they can see for themselves the numbers of people slipping through their ranches are on the rise again. Big groups. Multiple times a day, for at least the last 2 or 3 weeks.
As for the highways— it’s hard for Kinney County to know for sure— deputies have been injured— concussed following recent crashes and high-speed chases, and it’s becoming a challenge to maintain staffing on the highways.
The Department of Public Safety has sent a noticeable increase in troopers as a response to this— but accurate information about what they’re seeing and who they are arresting is not casually accessible to us here at the Dispatch.
What does this mean?
Well, Deputies need time to heal— and the County may have to recruit some more, somehow. If things get as bad as they were in the past, however, one wonders if some of the local landowners won’t decide to return to engaging with private security and volunteers. (We’re avoiding that militia word.)
An election is on the horizon. And we’ve met several people who are hoping to unseat District 23 Congressman Tony Gonzales— believing he’s soft on the border, soft on the second amendment and basically not particularly conservative, even though he’s nominally a Republican.
So many seem to be running, in fact, that some observers naturally worry they’ll simply split the vote and leave Gonzales in place without even a runoff.
We’ve never met the Congressman— we know a few of the folks that work in his offices, and they all seem like nice people who care about their communities.
But there’s no getting around this perception that’s dogging his heels— a perception that he’s beholden to the monied interests that support this reckless importation of migrants and illegal aliens.
The man’s been censured by Republicans statewide, but our feeling is that as long as he can count on strong-to-decent support in the San Antonio and El Paso areas, he’s going to be very difficult to unseat as an incumbent. And you don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that.
Similarly, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict the bad ends awaiting so many of the migrants and the migrant children that have been lost in the shuffle— in some cases, surely delivered directly into the arms of those looking to prostitute them or otherwise take advantage of them.
We will be incredibly lucky if this is the greatest disgrace of our times. Not much imagination is needed to foresee the possibilities of something even worse if all of this continues unchecked.
That’s all for this morning— don’t know about you friends, but our shoulders are slumping with the doom and gloom. Let’s talk about something else.
Many years ago, while anchoring the evening news in Laredo, TX, we felt privileged to be witnessing the renaissance of an elderly Carlos Santana as he roused himself from semi-retirement, recorded a fresh album in collaboration with a bunch of younger artists, and took home what felt like all of the grammies, and was upfront and honest about his faith and relationship with the Lord while doing so.
And we were feeling these feelings thousands of miles away from anywhere that it was actually happening. Didn’t matter. There was something about the way it all went down.
It was the most exciting and refreshing story in music and entertainment that year, and probably that decade.
Never imagined we’d see something like that again— let alone something even more astounding, but it seems this Oliver Anthony character is the real deal.
We’ve been obsessively listening to his songs and the various podcasts he’s been appearing on. We’ve even been watching videos of other people watching this guy.
What a story. What an achievement. What a fascination— that something so fresh and raw and real can somehow make it out in front of us all, despite so many smokescreens out there.
We always hasten to tell others that we’ve never felt terribly religious. That we’ve been agnostic at best our whole lives.
In “O Brother Where Art Thou,” Pappy O’Daniel’s kin and asskissers all tell him, “Pappy— maybe we need to get us some of that reform,” referencing how the reform candidate is eating his lunch.
If a little love for the Lord is what’s getting Oliver Anthony to the point of opening the well of his manifest talents so wide and so powerfully…. well, Pappy, Mammy, maybe we all need to get us some of that old time religion too and just see what happens.
Whether we’re ready to dive right into a relationship with the Lord or not— one thing we all should keep in mind is that the sun shines for the sinner and the blessed alike.
That sunshine belongs to all of us, and we should take all of the moments we can to appreciate it.
Have a great morning— as always, no one should confuse this humble newsletter for any kind of an official communication by Kinney County government, despite our employment there.
We’ll see you again soon, until then— keep those toes tapping, and an eye on what’s happening.
Great job Matt. I always love reading these. So agree with all of it. Crazy times. Gods got this and is planned ahead of where we are.
Music references were awesome!