Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol agents rescued four migrants who had been abandoned on Texas ranches. Sheriff’s office officials in Brooks county reported 50 migrant deaths during 2018 on these ranches located about 80 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border.
Falfurrias Station agents patrolling on Highway 755 came upon a migrant woman who said she was abandoned by human smugglers. The agents provided the woman with medical assistance and transported her to the Border Patrol station for processing, according to Rio Grande Valley Sector officials.
The agents began following the woman’s path through the ranchlands. Several hours later, the agents tracked down three additional migrants who had also been abandoned. The agents provided the migrants with basic medical attention and transported them to the Falfurrias Station for processing.
Officials did not report on any human smugglers who were involved.
During 2018, Border Patrol agents and Brooks County Sheriff’s Office deputies recovered the bodies or skeletal remains of 50 migrants on the ranches which surround a Border Patrol immigration checkpoint located about 80 miles north of the border.
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 50 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 said his people are having to pick up the pieces while the government stalemate over border security continues.
“These deaths are a direct result of a lack of will to secure the border,” the sheriff concluded. “Congress must act to provide the funding needed for solving this problem. The longer they delay, the more people will die.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.