Jaw-Dropping Numbers from DPS

And, Covid-19 Rampaging Through Kinney County Courthouse

If you haven’t been keeping up with Charlotte Cuthbertson’s reporting at the Epoch Times you might’ve missed some alarming numbers from the Del Rio area. It seems she’s gotten ahold of several special law enforcement briefings from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s “Border Security Operations Center.” If you’re unfamiliar, the Center is basically a Texas Ranger operated intelligence center, part of the shift in recent years to make DPS more like a Texas FBI.

The briefing, dated Nov. 2nd, and marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive” says in just one week alone 22,651 illegal aliens from 40 different countries were apprehended near the Mexican Border in Texas.

The reporting week encompassed the seven days from Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, and according to the previous week’s numbers and a report from May, the numbers have been this high for months.

Law enforcement arrested 48 fugitives and 13 gang members. In addition, more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, 669 pounds of methamphetamine, and 87 pounds of cocaine were seized. Also confiscated were 27 handguns, three long guns, and more than $188,000 in cash.

In the past six months, three separate currency seizures each exceeded $1.5 million.

If you haven’t already gone looking— the article’s worth a read, just for a bird’s eye view of the kind of analysis that’s being done in Austin, and also a look at what perhaps State Officials are seeking to emphasize and de-emphasize as the Texas Border Crisis continues. An intelligence report like this will combine raw data from Federal, Local, and State sources and serve up all kinds of analysis and interpretation.

One thing that did come up in a recent conversation with area law-enforcement, is the recent numbers of arrests of illegal aliens from “terror-sponsoring states.” Most folks immediately think of middle-eastern nations when they hear that phrase, but it also includes places like Cuba and North Korea. Typically, the state of Texas will see a handful of illegals from Syria, Iran, and North Korea every week. But according to the DPS report, there’s been 100’s pouring in from Cuba. Kinney County has seen it’s share in the last several months— the report points to more than 1100 Cubans arrested or detained statewide in a 2 week period.

Increased Numbers on the Way from Middle-East

Meanwhile— the always excellent Todd Bensman reports that all those Cubans are about to be joined by increased numbers from alarming locations.

It’s worth pointing out, that part of Bensman’s pedigree is time spent employed as an analyst at the Department of Public Safety’s “Border Security Operations Center” that we highlighted in the previous item. His latest piece is analyzing a news release from the Federal Government.

AUSTIN, Texas — The press office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection offered no judgments in a recent press release pregnant with unspoken meaning — just the facts, ma’am. But I certainly can.

The nation’s main border policing agency put out a November 30 press release pointing out that in just one randomly selected time frame in just one of the Texas border’s overwhelmed sectors (Del Rio), during the third week of November, Border Patrol agents caught migrants from regions of the world bristling with Islamic terrorist organizations.

Two men from Syria were caught on November 23. One man was from Lebanon. Another hailed from Tajikistan. Still another arrived after a long journey from Uzbekistan. Six showed up from Eritrea, which sits in a dangerous northeast African neighborhood sharing borders with Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

….

The new CBP press release in this taboo subject area conspicuously self-censors the national security meaning behind the surging international origins of illegal border-crossers these days. For instance, it makes no mention of how migrants from places like Uzbekistan, Syria, and Tajikistan can even reach the southern border.

As my book, America’s Covert Border War, details at length, they generally do it by flying to South America and then getting themselves smuggled through an 80-mile bottleneck stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap.

Although CBP did not explain in its November 30 press release how the migrants in question reached the southern border, the Center for Immigration Studies will next week. An expert panel on Tuesday, December 7, will focus on the heavily trammeled Darien Gap smuggling route through Colombia and into Panama. The panel will feature an Embera tribal leader who lives on Panama’s side of the Darien Gap with a front-row seat.

Understanding the importance of the Gap is key to any American immigration policy that would seek to plug it.

Neither did the new CBP press release mention why an American policy might seek to plug the Darien Gap.

The answer must be said out loud, even though it seems so obvious: Because people like the Yemeni terrorists discussed in the April press release — and Tajiks, Uzbeks, Syrians, Pakistanis, Somalis, Bangladeshis, Mauritanians, and many others from terrorism-plagues nations are coming through it all the time, reaching California, Arizona, and Texas. No one knows who most really are. America’s ability to learn whether they are friend or foe is no sure bet.

A worthwhile debate would center on whether U.S. policy should finally address the Darien Gap as a chokepoint where this kind of migration could be most easily stopped.

Another worthy debate should center on whether the United States should finally insist that illegal border crossing strangers of totally unknown backgrounds from places like Syria and Tajikistan should seek their asylum in any of the dozen or so other countries through which they pass — on both sides of the Darien Gap — long before they get to Del Rio, Texas.

It can be difficult not to cut and paste the whole article when Bensman is on a tear. One thing we did leave out, that might also be of interest was a bit about how Customs and Border Protection is censoring itself— pulling press releases off of the internet, after they’ve been published.

COVID Rampaging in Kinney County

And finally, something that may come as old news to many subscribers, is word that prosecutions of trespassing cases in Kinney County have been temporarily suspended, after the County Judge and the Court Co-Ordinator both tested positive for Covid during the Thanksgiving holiday/end of November period.

Compounding matters, a particularly nasty strain of cold & flu is also moving through the community— afflicting yours truly and many others as the community prepares for the annual “Frontier Christmas Celebration.”

Family members of County Judge Tully Shahan tell us he’s doing well, and responding to a course of treatment that includes the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies. So far, the County Judge has been able to stay home and recover, avoiding hospitalization. No word on when exactly cases will resume, though a reasonable guesstimation would suggest sometime around December 13th— a Monday.

That should do it for now, get your rest, plenty of vitamin C and D, and try to only hug healthy people. What we sickos are carrying right now, you don’t want any part of. We’ll see you again soon. As always the opinions expressed in this newsletter are entirely our own. So too are any errors. And neither should be construed as any indication of policies at the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office.