As the year end closed out in one Texas county, the remains of sixty-one human smuggling victims had been recovered in what has become known as the Brooks County killing fields.
Brooks County is not a border county. In fact, it is located about 80 miles north of the border. Yet it is the focus of human smuggling activity in South Texas that often leads to death for many of those who have paid for illegal transportation around a Border Patrol checkpoint.
“The Border Patrol checkpoint is located right in the middle of our county,” newly sworn-in Sheriff Benny Martinez told Breitbart Texas Sunday morning. “There is no way to move through the county for these human smugglers other than to attempt to sneak their human cargo through the checkpoint, or march them around the checkpoint and through the dangerous ranch lands in the county. This is where the deaths occur.”
Martinez told Breitbart Texas his county has recovered the bodies or remains of 61 people in 2016. “This happens because the human smugglers have no regard for human life,” Martinez said. “They will simply abandon anyone who cannot keep up with the group – leaving them to die from heat exhaustion, dehydration, or exposure to the elements.”
Breitbart Texas has accompanied Sheriff Martinez and other Brooks County deputies to the scene of body recoveries in the past. The rotting bodies and picked apart bones tell a tragic story of what must have been a horrifying and excruciating death for these people who paid as much as $6,000 to cartel-connected human smugglers to get them safely to their destination.
“The treatment of these illegal immigrants by their human smugglers is horrific,” Sheriff Martinez told Breitbart Texas in June 2016. “The people they take on these marches around the checkpoint are ill-prepared for the heat and hazardous terrain of these ranches. When they can’t keep up, they are left behind where they will die quickly if they don’t get help.”
The county, already strapped for cash, must deal with the cost of processing the remains and burial of the bodies. This can cost the county taxpayers up to $2,000 per body, Breitbart Texas previously reported. Martinez is responsible for patrolling an area about the size of Rhode Island with a handful of vastly underpaid deputies. Communications capabilities are sketchy in many areas of the county where cell phones and police radios won’t work because of the lack of equipment.
“We need help in establishing better communications for our deputies,” Martinez said. “It is important for officer safety, but it is also important when deputies come across someone in need of assistance. The migrants will frequently walk out of the fields and into the roadway after days of wandering lost in the fields. Many need help right away.”
Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint. (File Photo: Bob Price/Breitbart Texas)
Martinez said thing may soon get worse as the Border Patrol is expanding the checkpoint to eight lanes. “They are creating a smuggling superhighway right in the middle of our county,” Martinez expressed. “This could create even more pressure on our resources as more smuggling vehicles make their way north from the border.”
The new sheriff said they have seen an increase in traffic through the ranches. Increased presence from Border Patrol search and rescue teams, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, and Texas State Guard search teams have helped keep the numbers of deaths down.
Breitbart Texas has reported extensively on the rescues of migrants who have been abandoned and left to die by the ruthless smugglers in the area.
So I searched for this story and there was NO media coverage. More proof of how concerned with human suffering. It only concerns them when it can be politically exploited. Like how upset Sandy gets over the plight of illegal immigrants.
@Deplorable Me: I get all emotional over cyclone fences and parkinglots, then reapply garish lipstick, check the time on my 600 dollar gucci watch, check that Wayfair isnt shipping these kids beds back to my DC job of passing a relief bill that assists the cartels in child trafficking while borrowing another 4.5 billion from China. Whew exhausting!
That Hog kid and AOC yup.
@kitt: I’m sure she was devastated to learn that the illegal immigrants did not have access to garbage disposals, which she only recently discovered existed.
@Deplorable Me: After finding out her luxury apt had one she took it as a personal insult.
After taking his under 2 year old child to the Texas side of the Rio Grande, the dad went back for his wife, so the story goes. Then why did he and the child drown? Take a look at the picture; the child is under his t-shirt. There is something wrong with the story. And where was the lamestream press when dead babies were found in the Texas desert, left to die by coyotes and their parents?
@retire05: What is wrong with the story is that it can’t be exploited to blame Trump (though they try) so it is largely ignored.
@Deplorable Me:
I have friends who live on the border. They are sick of finding dead bodies on their ranch, including children, tired of having to carry a weapon when they check their cattle, tried of having illegals banging on their door when home, and robbed when not home.
But then, this was ignored when it was just a border state issue. No one cared but now that illegals are draining the budgets of northern states, the Republicans want it to end and the Democrats want to throw the borders wide open.