Dead Migrant Found 80 Miles North of Texas-Mexico Border

Border Patrol agents and a Texas sheriff’s deputy recovered the recently deceased body of a Mexican national who died while attempting to circumvent an immigration checkpoint 80 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border.

Dispatchers with the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office in South Texas sent Deputy Elias Pompa on December 27 to meet Border Patrol agents and a rancher regarding a recently deceased migrant found east of the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint. Deputy Pompa arrived on the scene with a justice of the peace and met with a Border Patrol supervisor who escorted them five miles into the ranch where they located the remains, according to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office.

A ranch hand found the body about 25 feet from a ranch road under a mesquite tree. Pompa reported the body had turned black and began to decompose, leaving a strong odor.

Pompa noted the deceased male wore a silver sweater, black baseball hat, a blue shirt over the top of a red shirt, and blue jeans. He also wore a silver belt buckle with two scorpions on the side of a center circle.

The report stated the migrant had a Mexican passport in his left rear pocket. The passport belonged to Luis Alberto Dimas Torres, a Mexican national who died shortly before his 21st birthday. He also had a Samsung cell phone in his possession.

The justice of the peace made the death declaration as required by Texas law. A funeral home employee recovered the body and arranged transportation to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s office where a final cause of death will be determined and the deceased migrant’s identity will be confirmed.

The death raised the total number of migrants who died in Brooks County during 2018 to 50, sheriff’s office officials told Breitbart News.

Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez blames the federal government’s failure to secure the border for the deaths of the 50 in his single South Texas county.

“The good news is, we recovered three fewer bodies in 2018 than we did the previous year,” Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez told Breitbart News in an interview on January 2. “The bad news is that 49 people died because Congress and the President cannot find a way to secure the border.”

“Several factors lead to these deaths in our county,” Martinez explained. “U.S. Border Patrol agents operate an immigration checkpoint in the middle of our county. You can’t drive from the county’s south side to the north side without going through this checkpoint. Consequently, human smugglers who have no regard for the health or safety of these migrants march them through very dangerous ranchlands in order to bypass the checkpoint.”

“The reality is, it can take several days to make the march from the dropoff points in the southern part of the county to the pickup destinations in the north,” the sheriff said. “Conditions on these ranches are very hazardous to these types of forced marches. The soil in this area is very soft sand. It makes a mile feel like three. Then you add in the lack of water, extreme heat in the summer, and cold in the winter, and you have a recipe for disaster.”

Martinez continues to watch the stalemate in Washington while his people pick up the pieces in Brooks County. “These deaths are a direct result of a lack of will to secure the border,” Martinez said. “Congress must act to provide the funding needed for solving this problem. The longer they delay, the more people will die.”