[radio chatter]
[beep] -10-4. We're going to come up on Mountain View
in about one minute.
I already got BC on it.
[melancholy tune plays]
♪♪
[grunts]
[beep] Five Seven.
It's getting to Mountain View Ranch right now.
[sirens wailing]
Be careful.
The driver looks like he's reaching down for something.
[sirens wailing]
[grunts]
Don't move!
(Sound of pepper balls being deployed)
-Aah!
-Don't move!
Turn around.
They were all running. She could see the driver up ahead,
picking up his pants, and the other six kind of --
then they all scattered.
So, with the weather the way it is,
it's going to be hard for them to -- yeah.
♪♪
Yeah, he just walked up from the brush.
♪♪
-Over the past two years, since Biden,
the Biden administration took over,
we have seen a huge, huge influx
of illegal immigration through our county.
It's an all-out invasion.
-Kinney County seems to be the tip of the spear
in really trying to secure the border.
-I feel like we've ramped up the intimidation a lot
by chasing these people like NASCAR drivers.
It's not normal.
-People who live out here, who are constantly faced
with all this foot traffic, the high-speed chases,
people driving through their fences --
our peace of mind is shot.
-[crying] It's pretty tough.
We shouldn't have to live like this.
-Well, Kinney County is the 27th largest in the state,
but we have 16 miles of river area,
which is probably one of the smallest in the state,
but we're still a border county.
Kinney County lies between Val Verde County
and San Antonio.
Anything that leaves Val Verde, trying to get to San Antonio,
has to come through here.
And, with the checkpoints in Del Rio,
the Valley area, and Eagle Pass area,
a lot of that illegal traffic gets funneled up here
through six highways that lead directly from the border.
[horn blaring]
[lowing]
-I'm trying to raise a family and children
that can run and play in this large backyard
that we're so lucky to have, and I can't do that anymore
because who knows when the next illegal
is going to be hiding behind a bush,
ready to ambush my wife and kids when they're walking to the car?
I can't tell you how many times that's happened
in the last couple years.
We've had one of the ranch houses
broken into twice in the last week.
[lowing]
If you had groups of 5, 10, 15 men from a foreign country
coming through, breaking your fence down every day,
hiding in your backyard or in your shed
or breaking into your house to evade law enforcement,
to evade getting arrested --
that's what we're dealing with every single day out here.
I feel bad for about half the people
that come through here that get caught.
You talk to them and you hear their stories
and you realize how blessed we are
to be born and raised here, in a country
that people are literally dying, trying to get to.
The people who are here for good reasons,
the people who are just here to work,
we need to make it easier for them
and we need to make it harder on the criminals.
[lowing]
But, without a doubt, all of these people
are actively trying to evade getting arrested.
They're trying to evade getting caught
by any kind of law enforcement.
So, yeah, I think Kinney County is doing what I would do,
if I was in charge of trying to do anything I could
to protect my citizens, to protect my local residents,
yeah, to protect my family and my property
and any of that kind of stuff.
-We're just waiting on BP, buddy.
-That one I just called in to Liz, it was loaded.
-It was loaded, too?
-Yeah, because dispatch just said BP was notified.
-Okay.
-And it was, it was bouncing like he was heavy.
-Yeah?
-We were seeing an increase
in people walking through the ranches.
They were seeing more people, water lines being broken,
[alert chimes] fences being cut.
Myself, the county attorney got together,
"What are we going to do?"
He wrote up a declaration of disaster.
Said, "Well, if we can catch them on your property,
I will file charges on them for criminal trespass,"
and it just kind of spiraled from there.
-Where are you from?
-From Luvianos.
-Where is that? -Mexico.
-Mexico? -Sí.
-Did the young man who was driving you threaten you in any way?
-Yes.
-Yeah? What did he tell you?
-[inaudible]
-For a crime, there has to be consequences
and charging them with criminal trespass, hopefully,
is a deterrent to keep them out of Kinney County
because, if we just catch them and turn them over
to Border Patrol, there's no consequences.
They're just being kicked back across to their homeland.
-It's hard to see stuff like that, when you see families.
-What was the reason for the stop?
-Uh, he went off the roadway.
-Y'all don't have the driver because he went?
-Yeah, he went. We're going to try to look for him here in a little bit.
Y'all don't have a brush crew out right now?
-We might. Let me give them a call.
-Okay. Yeah, because I think the last location she got,
they were hunkered down, just right in there.
We're going to try to go in there, but if we can get professionals --
[laughs]
-That is my job.
Oh, I might have one more, so, I'll let them know.
-Alright, thank you. -And you.
♪♪
-I believe that the United States,
I'll say it publicly, is not what it claims to be.
Our rights as human beings are not defended.
From the moment I entered that place it was like I was stripped of my humanity.
The officers always assaulted us.
They stripped us of our clothes without any explanation.
They gave me a translator but it didn't do me any good
because there was a bad internet signal.
Then a person passed before me and was forced to sign a document that stated
he was indigent because he didn't have the capacity to hire a lawyer.
Then I heard that he had been charged with trespassing with a Category B misdemeanor
and that he had to serve, under state law, three months to one year in jail,
with a minimum bond of $5,000.
And then it was my turn, and it happened the same way for me.
They asked if I had money for an attorney and I said no.
-It's impossible not to step on private land here.
It's a trap, [scoffs] like prosecution,
and it's not necessary.
It does not mean that someone's violent.
It just means that they stepped on land.
-What we're seeing on the border is a range
of civil and human rights abuses.
So, we have had DPS officers be documented as, you know,
telling immigrants to come onto a certain property,
so that they can then charge them with trespassing.
We've heard of ranchers sending dogs
to go and chase down immigrants.
We've heard reports from immigrants
inside the Texas prisons themselves
who have been kept inside for three months
without sunlight, without access to an attorney,
without access to good-quality nutrition or food.
-Maybe the sheriffs think I don't understand,
but I think we do have significant overlap.
We're critical of our leaders on the federal level,
who are not addressing this properly.
People aren't able to get in through ports of entry
because of Title 42 and so, they're entering illegally
and those are all the people
who are attacking, invading our country,
are those people who would make legal attempts at entry,
but physically, legally, are not able to.
-You want me to just open and say,
"Hey, free pass through Kinney County"?
Send me your address and I'll send them your way.
Let you take care of them.
Just because my backyard's bigger
and happens to be on the border
doesn't mean that I want them here.
Now, remember, I'm talking about illegal aliens.
I'm not talking about immigrants.
Don't edit this where it makes it look
like I'm against the immigrant.
I'm not. We're all immigrants.
-I think that the longer that we go without a real solution
from the federal government or the state government,
it's going to lead to more reckless action
from actors like Brad Coe,
because he's turned his sheriff role
into a sort of Border Patrol role.
-I'm not a monster. I'm not trying
to push everybody to go home, get killed in your home country.
No. Let's do this the legal way.
Parts of our immigration laws do need to change.
Make legal immigration flow a little smoother
because sometimes people have to wait years.
-Everyone has wanted immigration reform.
Everyone understands it doesn't work.
So, why haven't we begun
to create something that does work?
-It's not about politics.
I do know that both sides of the aisle
has had decades to get something right
and it hasn't happened yet,
so, I don't care who does something about it.
Somebody's just got to do something.