Working Behind the Scenes
A Dearth of News Coverage
You won’t find much recent news coverage of what’s currently happening as local and regional officials try to come to grips with the Border Crisis.
There are several reasons for that, we’ll get to them in just a moment.
Perhaps the biggest thing happening behind the scenes was recent testimony in Georgia, by figures like Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd, Terrell County Judge Dale Carruthers, and Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith.
The group and several others, spoke before the Georgia Senate Committee on Interstate Cooperation.
The main reason it hasn’t seen much coverage is because there was nothing concrete to come of it, yet. It basically amounts to a lot of talk.
That said— it’s still something to keep an eye on, as officials at the local level in Texas attempt to build broader networks to compel stronger action by the State and Federal Governments.
Here’s the video of the proceedings.
Feel free to watch the whole thing. Readers who are unfamiliar with Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd may value his extensive testimony, breaking down just exactly how trafficking works today, and how local law enforcement combats it, and where things are falling short. But as we’ve been alluding, there’s not a clear piece of actionable news to report from the thing, which is the main reason why we aren’t seeing anything much about the event in statewide or national press. It’s not a question of bias— it’s a question of keeping the interest of the audience. A “bunch of old guys talk a lot in a small room,” just isn’t a very compelling headline.
We did find a brief writeup in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which we’re going to share with you, if only to take a few pokes at it. It is demonstrative of the sort of condescension and cluelessness that remains in certain quarters of the press where there seems to remain a vested interest in trying to deny that there’s even a border crisis at all.
The piece is here. Truthfully, the reporter seems much too young to have internalized the kind of condescension betrayed by the overuse of “scare quotes” around several words like “invasion” and “overrun.” We suspect his editors at the paper probably contributed those.
Among the first to speak to the lawmakers was Georgia National Guard Major General Tom Carden, who said that there are currently 126 members of the state’s National Guard deployed at the southwest border to assist the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Carden explained that the Georgia National Guard doesn’t come in direct contact with migrants, but rather supports with intelligence initiatives.
As frequently referenced over the course of the three-hour-long hearing, there has been a surge in border crossings under President Joe Biden. In fiscal year 2022, U.S. authorities stopped migrants 2.8 million times at the U.S.-Mexico border – surpassing the previous record set just a year earlier. But a new border crackdown rolled out last month has already sent the number of migrant apprehensions plummeting.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation inspector Jeff Roesler explained that migrants who find their way to Georgia — whether they crossed the border illegally or not — are among the people most likely to fall prey to human trafficking and exploitation schemes. They’re made vulnerable, he said, by the need to repay the sometimes exorbitant fees that intermediaries or smugglers might have charged them to get them in the country.
“They’re coming to make a difference for their family. They are coming to provide. … But what’s happening when they get here is that the amount of money that they owe keeps going up, so they’re in debt and they have no foreseeable way to get out of that debt but to continue to work.”
Roesler said that a recent focus of the GBI’s newly created Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit has been on agricultural labor trafficking. Georgia made national headlines roughly a year ago when federal prosecutors said dozens of Latin American farmworkers were trapped in “modern-day slavery” on South Georgia farms.
The Senate hearing gave extended speaking time to a delegation from Texas made up of two local sheriffs, a local judge, a state representative, and the president of “Texans for Strong Borders,” among others, who touched on cartel activity at the border and described communities “overrun” by migrants.
Referring multiple times to an “invasion” at the border, they needled the Biden administration for what they said amounted to inaction around border enforcement, and a “wide open” border policy. It should be noted, though, that funding and staffing levels for border protection have remained stable between the Trump and Biden tenures. Border enforcement policies were not discontinued.
The Texan speakers said Georgia leadership can show support for the situation at the border by contributing funds to the building of a border wall, or by joining Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in formally declaring an invasion.
—Reporter Lautaro Grinspan, The Atlanta Journal - Constitution
The end of the piece tries to draw parallels between Biden and Trump border staffing and policies— essentially saying everything’s the same— there’s no difference. This is obviously untrue— and ignores how more than 80-percent of all Border Patrol agents have been withdrawn from the field to act as administrators and processors for the vast numbers of fraudulent asylum seekers that have been emboldened by the “easy-on-immigration” rhetoric of the new administration, and the copious amounts of NGO/Taxpayer money waiting to ease their passages through Mexico and the Darien Gap.
The article also claims there’s been a steep decline in “the number of migrant apprehensions.” That’s not because fewer are coming. It’s because Border Patrol and the Federal Government has reclassified many of those coming across and isn’t bothering to arrest them anymore.
To put it more simply: if a City Police Dept. suddenly decided to stop arresting people for murder— but instead filed manslaughter charges— at the end of the year, they’d be able to point to a statistical decrease in murders in their jurisdiction. Good job everyone! We’ve solved murders! See how that works?
It may very well be that the Reporter and his Editors are unaware of these matters. They certainly didn’t bother paying too close attention to the testimony, mistaking County Attorney Brent Smith for another Texas Sheriff.
The reporter’s from Argentina. What’s his editor’s excuse? Well, they probably just didn’t really care enough about the story to do more than a spell-check.
In Kinney County things remain much the same with the new normal continuing. Lots of chases, lots of bailouts.
Longtime associate of the newsletter, Mr. Local Wag, had a bailout near his house. We asked if he had his gun handy.
“Locked and strapped, vato.”
We took a few minutes at the end of the week to tune in to some of the courtroom proceedings in Kinney County, available live on youtube when court is in session.
We haven’t been following along closely, and we can’t really comment on the finer points of the arguments— we’re not lawyers. But one thing that jumped out at us is the vast gulf of difference in age and presumably experience between the bulk of the defense attorneys and the two prosecutors working for Kinney County.
A romantically notioned sort might wax on for several lines about the idealistic fires of youth, and the smothering weight of age and reality and so on and so forth.
But honestly, one of the untold stories may wind up being one of some incompetence. Reports have reached us of defense attorneys failing to notify their clients that they were in court, among other things.
Another disturbing element that’s reached our attention is word that many of the attorneys being hired to represent accused trespassers are from a Harlem, NY activist organization, and allowed to practice law in the State of Texas because of the principle of reciprocity, after completing a small course of familiarization.
So— what’s happening here is possibly millions of dollars in taxpayer money is being used to pay out-of-state lawyers. As if there just aren’t enough Texas lawyers around here.
Is that a fact?
Does anyone truly think there’s a shortage of attorneys around the state who could use some work?
What in the world is going on? A less charitable thinker might suspect that some kind of a political orthodoxy is being sought out.
Very weird.
Texas Scorecard has a great recent write up of even more issues surrounding the legal defense industry that has sprung up around Operation Lone Star. Here’s that.
It basically takes them to task for using taxpayer funded attorneys to represent clients in civil matters. A huge problem.
It’s one thing to be obligated to provide a legal defense in the case of criminal accusations— it’s another for the state to take public funds and pay for civil defense as well.
The Lubbock Private Defenders Office is one organization tasked with defending illegal aliens in criminal cases by the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.
Amrutha Jindal, the chief defender of the Operation Lone Star program for LPDO, has approved the assignment of indigent defense for multiple illegal aliens facing civil proceedings for failing to appear in court.
Per Texas law, “An indigent defendant is entitled to have an attorney appointed to represent him in any adversary judicial proceeding that may result in punishment by confinement and in any other criminal proceeding if the court concludes that the interests of justice require representation.”
Thus, illegal aliens may only receive taxpayer-funded legal representation when facing criminal charges or charges that could result in jail time.
In the aforementioned civil cases that Jindal approved counsel for, no possible outcome of the proceeding could result in jail time and should not involve a state-funded attorney.
According to the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, a bond forfeiture proceeding (what the illegal aliens are facing) is considered a civil matter since it does not result in jail time.
Since Texans are not provided with indigent defense in civil matters such as these, some taxpayers may wonder why they must foot the bill to provide it for illegal aliens.
Texas Scorecard has documented previous incompetence and attempts by LPDO to allegedly sabotage the judicial works of OLS.
—Reporter Sydnie Hendrie, Texas Scorecard
Longtime readers are probably familiar with what Ms. Hendrie is referencing and linking to at the end of that excerpt— allegations of possible misdeeds going back to the beginnings of the LPDO’s involvement in Operation Lone Star when it was being run by its original leader, a man named Phillip Wischkaemper.
But just in case, here’s our take:
And on that note, we’re going to call it a morning.
As always, this newsletter is an independent work product, predating our employment with Kinney County and is maintained out of a sense of obligation to our readers and our own personal enjoyment.
It should not be mistaken for any kind of an official statement on behalf of Kinney County or its leadership. Indeed, any mistakes, errors or sins of personal bias are entirely our own.
Keep it high and tight for now, and we’ll see you again soon.
'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small.' Though me thinks it is we they are a grinding.