66°
64º | 76°
An influx of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. southern border under the Biden administration has Patrick Zuberbueler on constant alert when working on his family’s ranch in southwest Texas.
“I’m always looking over my shoulder,” the 52-year-old told the Houston Daily. “It’s never been like this before. People are apprehensive. Carrying guns. Locking their doors at night in an area where before you didn’t have to worry about leaving your keys in your car.”
Part of the family 30,000-acre ranch (mid-size for Texas, Zuberbueler said) lies along the Rio Grande. He lives in the nearby Comstock, a town of 200, where he now often sees State Police cars parked at either end of town.
“The other day I told one of them, 'It’s sad you have to be here but I’m glad you’re here,'” he said. “It’s worse in Del Rio (36 miles to the south) where it’s easier to cross the river. I’ve heard that a young mother of three carries a gun around the house all day.”
The explosion in the number of crossings since Biden took office, and with it a spike in crime, some involving Mexican cartels, show that Zuberbueler has a right to be afraid.
With the end of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported nearly 900,000 land border encounters along the country's southern border, a 291% jump in encounters over all last year.
Whit Jones III, a generational rancher, told NPR that he has witnessed a “significant increase” in human trafficking and smuggling with the increase in illegal crossings.
"They drive as far as they can on the property and tearing down fences as they drive," Jones said. "The car stops and everybody bails out of the car. So that's why they call it a bailout."
It’s big business for the cartels. They make as much as $14 million dollars a day smuggling individuals into the United States, Fox News recently reported.
“Trafficking is a multibillion-dollar industry," former Tucson Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal told Fox. "A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings. Some are essentially indentured servants and they're working off this debt for a long period of time. In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt."
Zuberbueler said it’s like living back in the days of Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary who in 1916 led raids on border towns in Texas and New Mexico.
“But now it’s tens of thousands coming in, and they no longer fear the border patrol the way they used to,” he said. “They get their feet on American soil and know we’re going to take care of them. We have gotten to the point of not even uttering Biden’s name around here.”
Some of Biden’s fellow Democrats have criticized his border policies as well.
Congressman Vicente Gonzalez (D-McAllen) told the Washington Post that Biden had created a “system that incentivizes people to come across” and was sending a message to “that if you come across you can stay.” For Gonzalez, the fix must be “by changing the policy at our doorstep,” without which the flow “isn’t going to stop or slow down.”