Good morning, friends,
We’ll start off today with a photo that came in late last week on the Kinney County area Operation Drawbridge Cameras that was subsequently released on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.
It shows a giant-sized group of men, women, and small children, walking through the brush somewhere in Northern Maverick County, near the village of Quemado, on one of the routes that leads to Kinney County. In the lower righthand corner, you can see what looks like a border patrol vehicle on scene to begin sorting things out.
The image has been cropped to remove certain locational data that law enforcement wants to keep private.
Operation Drawbridge is a program that was started years ago under Governor Rick Perry, that supports a network of hidden trail cameras that are able to uplink their photos to border area Sheriff’s Offices. The cameras require dedicated maintenance schedules— batteries and so on— but given that, it’s pretty much clockwork.
Since the release of that photo, the Sheriff’s Office has notified local County Commissioners that intelligence is forecasting several additional large groups, that should be arriving in the area this week.
There’s no clear indicator why these folks are subjecting themselves to this kind of hardship by avoiding the port of entry— but a few minutes of thought raises several possibilities. They’re being forced, the bridge is already too busy, or there’s some ridiculous rumor that they’re responding to.
The most likely reason is that they’re being forced. Crossing as they are demands a diversion of Border Patrol and possibly also local law enforcement personnel to deal with it— leaving whole other areas wide open. The cartels may not even be actively moving a product at such a moment— it could just be a test of lawmen’s responses.
Many layers.
Also catching our eye this morning— something from the “we kind of already knew this,” file— word of a leaked “bolo” from Laredo Police that advises patrolmen to be on the lookout, after information from the FBI suggesting “organized crime” is kidnapping American Citizens.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but don’t bother googling for more information in the press— there isn’t any, at least not yet.
According to what reporting there is, someone leaked the bolo out on social media. This speaks to a prevalent attitude in Laredo, where the news and news coverage tends to be very sanitized. Many reasons for this, including an atmosphere of litigiousness, and difficulties in getting people to be on the record.
But truthfully— anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear has known this is something that’s been going on for a while— no one should need the FBI to tell them that the Cartels are freely kidnapping whomever they wish and dragging them across the river.
We talked about a recent incident right here in this newsletter, not so long ago, where a guy got dragged out of his house and taken across, it was the second item in the newsletter linked below. At one point, surveillance cameras at the bridge showed him trying to escape the car— blood on his face— and getting dragged back in.
That guy— Erik Tadeo Ramirez is still missing by the way. Authorities will probably never find his remains, which are almost definitely already unidentifiable powdered ashes scattered out in the middle of nowhere in whatever new area the Cartel del Noreste is using for body disposal.
We explored how that happens way back when in this post:
This is real stuff. This isn’t some make believe fear-porn being made up by politicians for votes. There’s nothing make believe about the burden Mexican forensics officials are under, in trying to sort out what remains they are able to discover and the hundreds of thousands of unsolved missing persons and murder cases that go nowhere in Mexico.
Imagine what it’ll be like when local US authorities are similarly overwhelmed?
Guess what? In some places, they already are. Kinney County, for example, has no time to spare, hardly— in trying to investigate captured cellphones that may or may not have actionable data. Attempts are being made— but we personally aren’t holding our breath. Too many people. Too busy. Too many cases.
Brooks County is possibly the deadliest county in Texas for illegal foot traffic. They’re buried in bodies. More than 8,000 since the middle 90’s. Nobody in Brooks County has time to investigate anything serious regarding each one of those dead individuals.
It’s all they can do just to identify them.
And there’s nothing make believe about the fact that at least some of this stuff is creeping into the fabric of border communities and has been for some time.
Now imagine that repeating and spreading in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Tulsa, etc. Only instead of dragging people across, they’ll just take care of business right there.
Now realize that it’s already happening.
Hell, the City of Austin already can’t police itself— pulling DPS troopers in from the surrounding areas to make up manpower shortfalls, when DPS is already stretched to its limits. And that’s without any sort of noticeable major cartel crime.
What’s to be done?
Do you think the unrestrained importation of illegal aliens that have had zero-to-nothing in the way of examination or vetting is likely to help, or hurt these situations?
That’ll do it for now.
As always, this newsletter is put out into the world without oversight and should not be mistaken for any kind of official communication by Kinney County Government. Any mistakes, errors, or bad takes are entirely our own.
We’re still fiddling with podcast plans. Luckily, the conversation was pretty evergreen.
Until next time, have a great morning— drink a little extra coffee for us, and we’ll see you again real soon.