Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is delivering on his promise to use state troopers as well as county jails and courts to arrest illegal aliens, try them for criminal trespassing, and imprison them, The Epoch Times reported.
The Kinney County Sheriff’s Office, situated on the Southwest border near Del Rio, has received three vans filled with more than a dozen illegal aliens each in the past week: 17 on Aug. 3, 17 on Aug. 6, and 13 on Aug. 8.
The Texas Department of Public Safety finds most illegal aliens trespassing on ranches, but they do not have the resources to catch every criminal.
With more than an estimated one million illegal aliens entering the nation this year, the number of illegal aliens arriving at the sheriff’s office appears small, but not to tiny Kinney County, which has only 3,600 residents.
The rural border county has to process the illegal aliens in its parking lot at a picnic table, and even after they are booked, the jail has room for only 14 inmates.
After the illegal aliens stand before a Kinney County judge, authorities send them to Val Verde County, which holds them in a tent encampment.
From there they are transferred to Dilley, Texas, where they are imprisoned at the Briscoe Unit, which was cleared of regular inmates so that the state could use the facility to imprison illegal aliens.
Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said he has wanted to arrest and charge illegal aliens with criminal trespassing or other crimes for a while, but he had to wait until the state had resources and prison facilities prepared for them.
“We’re going to try to hold these people accountable,” Coe said, adding that the small crimes may deter some illegal aliens or at least prevent them from finding a quick path to citizenship.
“That’d be a check mark against them,” he said about a criminal trespassing charge. “Some type of consequence has to be there.”
