House Bill 20: License for Militias to Thrill?
And, Tummy Tucks, Brazilian Butt Lifts, & Why Certain Conservative Concerns Don't Matter
Good morning friends,
The story that has us sort of scratching our heads today is something that popped up at the end of the week last week— word of a bill at the legislature that would seem to be aimed at enabling and enshrining the use of militia in securing the border— formally and explicitly giving the State authority to “repel and return” illegal foreign nationals crossing from Mexico.
It would also create some kind of “Border Protection Unit,” that could possibly include private citizens.
The Texas Tribune has their take on it here. Here’s the Houston Chronicle. Don’t forget the Dallas Morning News, and here’s Newsweek.
Some observers may be inclined to say “Great, bring it on!” Others might clutch pearls and worry about racists being racist. And still others might wonder about our skeptical tone here at the Dispatch. Indeed, given our own now obvious bias, why wouldn’t we be in a state of full-throated support for the thing?
The answer is complicated, and like anything the devil’s in the details and there are plenty of reasons to have a wait and see kind of attitude.
Recent days have reminded us of a moment from some of the earliest days of our old career in TV news, when our boss at a station in Lubbock, TX had to put his foot down and squash any reporting that was based around bills and committees in Austin.
Simple truth is, you can drive yourself and your audience crazy— going and chasing off like a wild hare after each and every piece of paper that’s circulating around the Legislature.
In the Computer business they have a great word: “vaporware.” It describes how sometimes companies will drum up a little business with vague promises of some kind of program that’ll do wonderful things— but in the end, it never really existed.
A lot of legislation— a lot of bills— are like vaporware. They get put forward as proposals, sometimes earnestly meant— sometimes not— and many times they go nowhere. They die in committee. They never get brought to the floor. They get paired with some kind of a poison pill: “Vote for border security, and this amendment that mandates euthanizing elderly people!”
Is that the case here? No clue. And no way of finding out for certain from here. We’ll just have to see what happens next with House Bill 20.
It made sense at the time, in Lubbock, for that station to put the kibosh on a lot of the breathless reporting some of the gang wanted to do about each and every bill coming down the pipe. One of the new reporters was the daughter of someone that was a big deal at the Lege back then, forget who, and all she wanted to do was cover bills and bill-related activities. To her credit, when the boss squashed her area of primary personal interest, she split. It may not have happened right then and there, but she didn’t stay long after that.
It caught us by surprise, years later, when we began working at an Austin TV station and found very little appetite there for covering the nitty gritty at the Lege either. The bosses pretty much just left it all to the Dallas Morning News and the Statesman, in favor of chasing car crashes, school board shenanigans, and any kind of semi-extreme weather in the area.
Consequently, when something “real” was happening at the Legislature, the station tended to be hosed because none of the reporters had any contacts or time invested in being stuck in at the Capitol. Too busy chasing downed tree limbs in Tarrytown and Lakeway, maybe. The lesson there, for us, was that sometimes you have to just show up, even if there’s nothing dead sexy going on. If you don’t have the credibility with the lawmakers and staffers, you will struggle to get anywhere when you need to.
To put it another way, the challenge lies in making whatever the issue of the day is relevant and interesting. That’s the job. And it’s rather more important than downed tree limbs and random rollovers and other spot news.
Even so, you still have to exercise a little restraint when it comes to gushing or raging over every last bill.
What’s today’s controversial bill become? Tomorrow’s trash, more often than not.
And so it is with this one. House Bill 20 might go the distance, but our inner nihilist suggests that it probably won’t. Also too, it’s kind of a clue that the Governor isn’t exactly lobbying for the bill. That suggests to us that he doesn’t want it for whatever reason.
Have you seen the latest video from El Paso?
Apparently more than 1,000 would-be migrants tried to rush one of the bridges Sunday afternoon and push past U.S. Customs Agents.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin had it all in a twitter thread, which you can see here:
He goes on from that initial tweet, following up with official statements from CBP.
Elsewhere on twitter, one can find footage from the US side, where Agents were geared up for the rush.
Watching the footage, it looks like things settled just a little bit by the time they reached the US side. Lots of shouting, but no apparent violence on camera. Still, something to keep an eye on, and it’s a sure bet federal agents at the various ports of entry will be a little more alert than usual, even if there’s no official change in status or precautions being taken.
In the week that’s passed, we’ve all heard a few more things about those folks that got kidnapped in Matamoros— reportedly shopping for discount plastic surgery.
Some conservatives online and elsewhere are throwing doubt at the whole proposition— scrambling to point at the fact that some of the people involved had criminal records, and there’s no way they went all the way to Matamoros looking for a cheap tummy tuck or Brazilian butt lift. The idea goes that they were there looking for trouble— possibly meaning to buy a large quantity of drugs to take back to South Carolina with them.
So far, U.S. Investigators are sticking with the tummy tuck story, and not validating this grimmer scenario.
But even if it is true, we have to say: So what? It truly doesn’t matter if in this exact case someone was in Matamoros looking for trouble. Even if they were— there are plenty of Americans who travel to Mexico with benign goals and run afoul of the cartels.
It is why the State Department is warning Americans not to travel to Tamaulipas in the first place. Because bad things happen there with some frequency. Period.
The reason this particular case has been so publicized is because of the video and pictures documenting the moment they were captured and taken by the cartels.
Most of the evil that is perpetrated upon American citizens visiting in Mexico goes largely unnoticed by the public-at-large, for lack of such images.
Oddly, that doesn’t stop USA Today from trying to run a piece about how rare it supposedly is for the Cartels to target ordinary American citizens. Amusingly, you read the whole thing, and halfway through, there’s a quote from a US University expert of some kind, talking about how four of his students were kidnapped while on a trip into Mexico.
Weird.
Mexico’s totally safe, y’all, rank and file Americans are not usually being targeted.
Pay no attention to the State Department’s declaration and what’s visibly happening right in front of us all.
What a weird flex on the part of USA Today.
In any event, we don’t even have to try hard to find another situation involving American citizens. Here’s three ladies from the Rio Grande Valley town of Peñitas, who apparently had a side hustle, flea marketing thrift store clothing in Mexico.
They’re missing. Probably dead. The only reason we’re all learning about them is because it’s happened at the same time as this tummy-tuck thing.
Many such cases, sad.
Very few people are even bothering to mention the 100’s of thousands of Mexican citizens who have just simply gone missing and will never be found.
We explored the phenomenon about a year ago in a newsletter we headlined: “Nuevo Laredo’s House of Death.”
What’s significant about it, is that it illustrates something we brought up at the time: How messed up Mexico and the Cartels are, with what you could call the industrialization of body disposal— and why we should be concerned about anything that empowers and enriches them and facilitates more of their activity in the United States.
And finally, this morning— some more reporting from Bethany Blankley at the Center Square.
Two years in, according to her reporting, the State of Texas and Operation Lone Star has intercepted an estimated 355-thousand illegal foreign nationals.
She also reports there’s been about 23,000 felony charges filed associated with Operation Lone Star.
Critics of the program will probably point to older reporting by The Marshall Project that suggests the Governor’s Office may have been fudging some of the numbers associated with OLS early on.
Is it possible that a rigorous, more accurate count could be less than 355-thousand? Sure. It could also be more. Does it make much difference to the folks at home if it’s 250-thousand? How about 500-thousand? Or only 100-thousand? At what point does one say something like, “Oh gosh— I was okay with letting in 350-thousand non-citizens, but 400-thousand is just too far over the line!”
It becomes a ridiculous game of semantics and pedantry somewhere along the way. As it is, local EMS in Kinney County is stretched so thin, one worries that local taxpayers will continue to suffer needless medical complications and risk lack of service, because EMS is constantly out in the brush looking for lost migrants that are in dire straits— required by law— and unable to respond to taxpayers and citizens in need because they’re already dispatched to aid foreign nationals. And they should aid foreign nationals— it’s the humane thing to do— but so many are coming, it’s threatening to make it impossible to have a functioning EMS system.
One imagines it is much the same for many of the other border communities large and small.
Here’s an excerpt from Blankley’s piece— a section of local interest:
In Kinney County, the driver of a pickup truck, a female resident from Houston, was pulled over after committing a traffic violation. When the officer opened the back of the pickup truck, he found men wearing camouflage laying in the flatbed under a cover, officials said. Others were hiding inside the truck on the floorboards and back seat. In total, 12 were hiding inside and referred to Border Patrol.
When asked, “Who are all these people?,” she replied, “I’m always picking up people if they need a ride home. That’s what I was doing.”
Houston is roughly a six-hour drive to Kinney County.
When asked, “How many people are in there?” She said, “I’m not too sure. The truck is really full.”
She was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons.
Several bills have been filed this legislative session to increase penalties for human smuggling, ranging between 5-10 years in prison per count.
—Reporter Bethany Blankley, The Center Square
This highlights something we’ve mentioned in the past— the frequency with which would-be smugglers will make the dumbest excuses, trying to avoid being charged with trafficking.
“I was just trying to help some hitchhikers.”
“I stopped to help one guy— all these other ones jumped out of the brush. I was scared.”
“I didn’t know they were illegals.”
Etc.
It’s like some bunch of schoolkids making the lamest of stories up, to try and fool some tired teacher that doesn’t really care. The dog ate my homework. I was sick. There was a fire.
Border Patrol Agents and Federal Prosecutors have heard it all before. And local deputies and DPS Troopers are quickly catching up. One imagines they might swap stories about the most ridiculous ones they’ve heard so far while at the watercooler.
Ironically, we spent all that time up above, talking about how legislative bills and breathless coverage of legislative bills can sometimes be a waste of attention— and here at the end, we’re going to underline Blankley’s last line:
Several bills have been filed this legislative session to increase penalties for human smuggling, ranging between 5-10 years in prison per count.
Some of these smugglers can have a dozen aliens or more stuffed into their trucks and trailers. Even if it’s just four, that’d be a minimum sentence of 20 years.
Sounds “extreme,” but now that some of the deputies here in Kinney County are recognizing some folks behind the wheel that are apparently repeat offenders, “extreme” may be overdue for an appearance.
And on that note, we’ll call it a morning. We’ll almost certainly be back again tomorrow or the next day, after we’ve had a chance to shakedown the Sheriff and the Chief Deputy for any odd developments over the weekend.
As always, the Dispatch is an independent effort, produced without oversight and should not be mistaken for any sort of official communication by Kinney County officials, despite our ongoing employment with the County. We mention this as always, in the spirit of full-disclosure and to remain in keeping with County policies regarding social media.
Have a great morning, and we’ll see you again soon.
Great reporting, as usual with a touch of sardonic humor. Militia, militia, militia.... Or was that Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.... Oh well, same difference.