MCALLEN, Texas — Mexican cartel smugglers have been lashing out in apparent desperation at federal and state authorities during the current law enforcement surge in South Texas.
“We expected that,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw in an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas. “We are seeing some of that now, we are mindful of it. We have warned out troops about that … at the end of the day, we don’t care about their frustration. We could care less.”
As Breitbart Texas has been reporting, in 2014 the Texas governor ordered the deployment of hundreds of state troopers. The deployment of Department of Public Safety resources was an attempt to “combat the flood of illegal immigration in the state in the absence of adequate federal resources to secure the border”.
The deployment was in response to a new tactic by Mexican cartels where as Breitbart Texas previously reported, they began to move large numbers of Central American illegal immigrants through the south Texas region known as the Rio Grande Valley. The move created a revolving door as immigration officials were forced to release illegal immigrants in order to make room for new ones.
The tactic rapidly overwhelmed the capacity of U.S. Border Patrol personnel and facilities as agents were pulled off the border in order to help care for immigrants or to aid in processing the ones that turned themselves in.
The Texas law enforcement surge flooded the Rio Grande Valley with state troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers in an effort to apprehend cartel drug and human smugglers who tried to move their product north from the river. The added law enforcement presence has pushed drug cartels east and west in an effort to avoid law enforcement.
“As we increase the levels of security in those areas responsible for most of the smuggling, there is going to be frustration on both sides of the border,” McCraw said. “ In Mexico, because the (cartel) plaza bosses will have to move their operation into other cartel’s areas of operation, or somebody else’s area of operation within the cartel, that creates conflict.”
The same pressure is also reflected on the Texas side of the border as U.S. based cartel smugglers experience more difficulties in carrying out their operations.
“As they continue to lose loads or profit, those individuals here become frustrated, we see some of those individuals act it out,” McCraw said.
Breitbart Texas has been reporting on some of the cases where cartel smugglers lead authorities in high speed chases along city streets. Authorities along the Texas border have been shot at, had their vehicles rammed or been subjected to various physical attacks by smugglers or illegal immigrants.
Breitbart Texas has also reported on how Mexican drug cartels have been driving drug loaded vehicles into the waters of the Rio Grande in an effort to keep their drug loads from being seized.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project and you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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