An illegal immigrant was saved from possible starvation or death by exposure recently by Texas State Rep. Tony Dale (R-Cedar Park). Dale was with a group of hunters at a camp north of Laredo, Texas when the Guatemalan man walked into the camp and curled up by their campfire.
“All of a sudden out of the corner of our eyes, look over … someone sort of walked out of the darkness and laid down by the other fire. It was unbelievable,” said Dale in an article by Rudy Koski with MyFoxAustin. The man who walked up to their fire was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. “He had been walking for 3 days from Laredo, which is about 40 miles away, without food or any water, he was hypothermic and he was in really bad shape.”
This is not an isolated situation. Near the town of Falfurrias, Texas, it is not uncommon at all for hunters and ranchers to find illegal immigrants in desperate conditions. Last year alone, over fifty bodies of illegal immigrants were found in fields after they attempted to hike around the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint. Many others were rescued. Several bodies have already been found in Brooks County, Texas this year.
Dale said it had taken the immigrant thirty days to get from Guatemala to Laredo. He then hiked the forty miles (3 days) to where he found Dale and his fellow hunters. “He rode on the Beast, the train that you hear about, and he paid a coyote $1500 just to get him across the border into Texas,” Dale said, “and he was told he’d have food and water on the Texas side and the coyotes did what they frequently do, they abandoned the guy.”
With the opening of the 84th Session of the Texas Legislature, there is a lot of pressure on Republican lawmakers to do something about the problem faced by landowners in South Texas. Several bills have been introduced including one dealing with E-verify by Rep. Dale.
Dale said he supports efforts by his fellow legislators to deal with the problem and that his close encounter of the illegal alien kind has not changed his mind. “But I’ve always believed that our federal policies as related to the border, in particular, are essentially immoral, because this man put his life in jeopardy assuming he’d get across safely,” Dale explained, “and it’s our open border polices, catch and release policies that our federal government has to entice these people across.”
Breitbart Texas reached out to Rep. Dale’s office for additional information. He and his staff were not immediately available to comment on the matter.
Bob Price is a senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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