Odd Little Family Unit

Kinney County Sheriff's Deputies Report an Oddity

Lots of folks are all stirred up over this photo, posted on the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page. Las Moras Rd is out on the edge of Fort Clark Springs, a gated and fenced retirement/leisure community we’ve mentioned in earlier posts. The terrain in the background of the picture is pretty typical of the area all the way out to Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras. Lots of scrub, lots of mesquite.

What’s curious about the photo, is that there’s no way this seeming family group hiked all the way from the Rio Grande dressed like that. It’s too hot. They’re dressed in what would be winter hunting gear in this region. The routine 100-degree summer time temperatures down here would barbecue them in those clothes. All four would be stretched out in the desert dead.

It just doesn’t make any sense. This is just another ‘datapoint’ that demonstrates the murky, confused quality of this crisis, where people want to say it’s manufactured, or exaggerated, or that you can’t even trust the reporting.

There are people analyzing pictures of people on inflatable boats, crossing the river wearing life preservers, and shouting to the heavens that the pictures must be fake— that the people in them must be crisis actors. Are they? Who knows. It is true, that historically speaking the cartels could care less about putting life preservers on their human cargo. It has been suggested they’re doing so right now, because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of someone trying to arrest them for being on the water without life preservers. It’s wacky enough to be true. Who knows.

In the case of this picture, it’s entirely possible that this little group was separated from a larger group— left behind as they started to flag and fade with the heat in those heavy clothes. It’s also possible that they looted one of the many hunting camps in the area, and stole the clothes they’re wearing out of the closets waiting for winter hunting season.