End of the Month Statistics for Kinney County
And: Why Some May Be Calling the Border Crisis "Fake"
Hello again friends,
End of the Month statistics are out for the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office— setting a new record for smuggling activity in the county, as predicted in the local newspaper last week.
We’ll fold those in with some national numbers that have also come out recently, and take a look at some border crisis-adjacent news that we’ve been following along the way in just a moment.
Sheriff Brad Coe is calling the Month of October an incredibly busy one— filing 154 criminal cases. All but 2 are immigration related.
373 illegal aliens were apprehended on the highway and turned over to Border Patrol. 114 individuals were arrested for trespassing on area ranchland. 113 people were accused of smuggling illegal aliens.
"We hit 70 arrests (of smugglers) a few months ago and thought we were really doing well," said Sheriff Coe, "But the numbers just keep climbing."
—Kinney County Sheriff’s Office News Release— Set for publication in the Kinney Co. Post
Past readers may recall a recent observation by the Sheriff: "We'll know we're hurting them (the Cartels) when the numbers take a sudden drop," said Coe.
Of those 113 arrested for smuggling, 2 were juveniles. "We're still seeing a lot of driver recruitment happening on social media," added the Sheriff. "The majority of the smugglers we're seeing right now are from the Houston area, he said.
18 high speed pursuits were logged in the county for the month of October, and deputies confiscated 12 weapons-- mostly handguns.
—News Release, again— Set for publication in the Kinney Co. Post
Longtime readers know we prefer not to chase spot news in the county. It’s truthfully almost too much to keep track of, too much wear and tear on the car, and there’s no money in it.
But this is a good moment to share some photos with you, and another pertinent quote from our good friend Mr. Local Wag.
This photo was taken Oct. 25th, showing the fiery aftermath of a police chase on RR 674 in Kinney County. The driver apparently was pulled over, but took off again, only to lose control, roll over, and have his car burst into flames. Sheriff Coe was quoted by FOX News as saying that deputies saved the lives of two illegal aliens that were trapped in the trunk.
Local Wag says: “Jesus. It’s looking pretty damn Hollywood around here.”
He’s not wrong— that photo is some kind of Michael Bay spectacular. Just need to photoshop some undercover cops leaping through the air whilst firing pistols.
Our next photo isn’t as visceral, but is a spectacle of another sort:
This is a group of 300 found on a farm near the Maverick County line— about 3 days ago. They apparently took a wrong turn or got tired of waiting for Border Patrol to find them in Eagle Pass and started walking. It’s not immediately clear to us if this group was still in Maverick County or if they had crossed over into Kinney County. One imagines that if they’d made it to Kinney County, the adult males would’ve faced trespassing charges.
Photos and video of large groups like this one are incredibly common on the twitter feeds for Fox News reporters that are being stationed in Eagle Pass. Oddly, they’ve been getting accusations from folks with pronouns in their twitter bios of somehow staging things. It’s enough that some others are chiming in to make fun of it.
It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad.
Confronted with the evidence of how constant and daily these sorts of huge groups of asylum seekers are, certain left-leaning people are almost having a mental break and leaping to wild and baseless accusations.
Cognitive dissonance is painful, one reckons. It must be, given how people would rather deny the evidence of their own eyes, and the testimony of their own neighbors because of some kind of weird political tribalism.
Here’s the truth: Groups of 100, 200, 300 and more, are crossing into Eagle Pass every day, all day long. Period. End of. There’s no need to stage anything. There’s a basic “reporter’s row,” right under the bridge where journalists and photographers can set up and document so much of everything that it’s honestly shocking how little true shoe-leather and investigation is required to adequately document everything. To their credit, Fox does make an effort to chase angles of the story away from the bridge and the easy coverage available there.
Local entrepreneurs might as well set up RV’s and food trucks down there, it is such an ongoing thing. The nearby Texaco convenience store must be stocking a huge increase of beef jerky and fried burritos to keep up.
No staging required— the crowds come right across.
They come looking for Border Patrol like moths to flame, ready to request asylum. It’s the other groups, avoiding Border Patrol— avoiding the cameras— that we tend to see in Kinney County. They know there’s no asylum in their future. They’re from Mexico— or they already have criminal records in the US, but are coming anyway.
Ironically— what the naysayers are fastening onto when they claim “staged!” is the realization that none of these people seem to be truly fleeing war and deprivation with just the clothes on their backs. The naysayers are noticing how well fed, relatively comfortable, and relatively satisfied-looking most of the “migrants” seem to be in the video.
These are not the wide-eyed & shattered refugees we’ve all been told we’re receiving.
The naysayers are eyeballing the falsity of the proposition— unaware perhaps of the border-to-border conveyor belts of NGO’s and Cartels that are carrying these folks to our shores. Most efficient, most comfortable diaspora ever.
So— in a way— the naysayers’ eyes are working fine. The whole thing is indeed false on some fundamental level. But they’re reaching strange and pedestrian conclusions, in trying to blame street-level Fox News reporters for somehow staging the crisis.
Aim a little higher friends.
We mentioned some national numbers earlier. Here they are— from Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz. 2.2 million encounters for FY2022. It doesn’t matter how small the percentage of truly violent individuals are. When you have multiple millions of people coming through, even the tiniest percentages will see a plentitude of bad actors, capable of causing all kinds of trouble. How on earth can anyone possibly believe that the southern border is secure in any sense of the word at all?
The language is being tortured and stretched in so many ways— it’s no wonder the White House this week tried to take credit for and celebrate an unusually large social security pay increase, ignoring that the increase is tied to inflation— and actually represents the further beggaring of American senior citizens.
And finally this morning— something we’ve been ruminating on for about a week— the recent announcement of an upcoming change in leadership at the Texas Tribune.
The Tribune was founded about 10 years ago, by a man named Evan Smith— a former editor of Texas Monthly, and longtime journalist— one would assume that the next leader of the organization would be cut from similar cloth. A Texan. Perhaps. A journalist, certainly. And why not? Who better to captain the ship in a time when journalism seems to be in retreat in almost all other areas.
Well, such an assumption would be wrong, apparently.
Her name is Sonal Shah. She takes over as CEO at the Tribune in 2023.
Not a journalist, though she was raised in Houston after immigrating from India with her parents. She’s worked at Google, various non-profits, and for Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama along the way. The Tribune’s board of directors use a lot of buzzwords to describe her— phrases like “strategic leadership,” “social impact,” and “civic engagement,” but the bottom line seems to be something like: “This chick gonna make it rain, financially.”
And that may be more important than journalism chops in this climate— who cares how good your journalism is, if you can’t afford to keep the lights on while doing it?
Is it a signal that belts need to tighten at the Tribune? Maybe— but we doubt it— the Tribune seems to be awash in cash— millions in donations from Zuckerberg, the Gates, and other mega donors. Actually the same news release announcing her selection also touts $112 million dollars raised since the organization was founded.
But— money’s always getting spent, and it seems Ms. Shah’s job will be to keep the money taps opened all the way to the stops. The Tribune’s release suggests the Editor-in-Chief, a man named Sewell Chan will be in charge of the journalism.
We’ve had quiet discussions with liberal associates about the Tribune and politics. Our conversation partners lean toward the “Austin Socialist” bend of things— they seem troubled by the Tribune’s visible swerve in the direction of “establishment” politics and “establishment” journalism. This leadership change would seem to support their concerns, which were buttressed recently by TribuneFest in Austin that featured no less an establishment figure than Hillary Clinton and others.
Conservatives, on the other hand, will more than likely shrug and continue mostly not reading the Tribune, paying witness to the ongoing broadening and deepening of the chasm between parallel news economies on the right and the left. Though, it must be said, that while there are conservative efforts to publish alternative views on the news none seem to have achieved quite the same omnipresence in the state that the Tribune has, or even the same depth of funding.
As we always try to take pains to point out: The Tribune’s reporters all seem to make efforts to be impartial in their hard news reporting— times ahead will require them to continue doing so— and to perhaps try even harder, as the tribalism we’re all aware of continues to deepen.
In the end, it will remain up to the individual writers and editors at the Tribune to find their own ways toward sincerity and integrity, one story at a time— as it always is— and to be strong enough to tell the business side of the operation when it’s time to back off.
Easier said than done, of course. Good luck to them that will need it when conflicts between integrity and business inevitably collide. If Ms. Shah and Mr. Chan do their jobs right, it’ll be exceedingly rare.
All that said— our inner nihilist must assert itself in some small way: Ms. Shah better be able to reach right into people’s pockets and empty them, to be worth the integrity cost at the organization given her pedigree of political activism. Sewell Chan notwithstanding.
On the upside— it’s not as if the Tribune’s trying to pretend Ms. Shah is anything other than she is.
That’ll do it for this morning. Have a great one— we’ll be back again as circumstances warrant.
As always, this newsletter is produced without input from Kinney County officials and is put out into the world without oversight. It should not be mistaken for any sort of official communication, despite our employment at the Sheriff’s Office.