Manny Fernandez and Mitchell Ferman

“They’re as stressed as we are,” Jim Darling, mayor of the South Texas border city of McAllen, said of Border Patrol officials. The officials have released more than 2,200 people from government processing facilities in the Rio Grande Valley since Monday, setting aside once again the Trump administration’s vow to end what it calls “catch and release” of those who cross the border without authorization.

“We’re trying to determine how many sites we have to have. The last thing we want is people walking our streets and having to sleep in doorways,” Darling said.

The primary migrant-services facility in the region, a former nursing home in McAllen now used by Catholic Charities as an immigrant respite center, is already reaching capacity, with nearly every inch of the low-slung red-brick building occupied.

The air was thick with the smell of sweat Tuesday evening, with dozens of people waiting for assistance at the front of the building. Two government buses pulled up outside to drop off even more: 54 in one bus and 57 in the second. On Wednesday, migrants slept on blue padded mats on the floors of small crowded rooms as they waited for rides to the downtown bus station.

In El Paso, the sudden release of about 150 migrants Tuesday set in motion a flurry to try to accommodate them. A network of shelters run by the nonprofit Annunciation House had no more space, so city officials converted a public park into a staging area, until space for the migrants was found at local hotels.

Unauthorized border crossings have spiked in recent months, with more than 76,000 migrants apprehended on the southwest border in February, an 11-year high. Processing facilities in El Paso and in the Rio Grande Valley region have swelled with migrant families in recent days. Early Tuesday, Border Patrol agents at the border fence in El Paso apprehended a group of 194 men, women and children traveling together. About five minutes later, agents in another part of the city took in a second group of 252 migrants.

Last week, agents in the McAllen area encountered a group of nearly 300 migrants walking toward a river levee, the largest such group seen this year. In a single 24-hour period, agents in that region apprehended more than 1,000 migrants, most of them voluntarily turning themselves in and seeking protection under asylum laws.

The unusually large numbers are what caused agents in the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector this week to release some migrant families at an early stage, the agency said. The releases bypassed the usual procedure in which newly arrived migrants are handed over after initial processing to another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which may detain them or release them with some requirement that they show up for future court appearances.

Instead, migrants traveling in families are being released directly by Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, after being given papers instructing them to show up at a later date in immigration court. Local officials were told that Border Patrol facilities in the area were over capacity by about 2,100 migrants.

The Border Patrol said in a statement that the recent increase in apprehensions led to a “limited availability of space” at the agency’s facilities in the Rio Grande Valley sector. Out of concern for the safety of officers and migrants, the agency said, it has begun to release families after giving them a notice to appear in immigration court.

“RGV Sector will continue to coordinate with state and local stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations while these temporary measures are in place,” the agency said.

The recent releases resembled a similar series of unannounced mass releases of migrants late last year in El Paso and San Diego. This time, however, federal immigration agencies appeared to be coordinating more closely with local officials, who in December had been caught off guard.

The mass release in McAllen has caused a ripple effect along the Texas border. Officials in Brownsville, 60 miles east of McAllen, were told by Border Patrol officials to expect releases there in the coming days as well. It appeared that the Border Patrol intended to ease pressure on the McAllen shelter network by putting migrants on buses and dropping them off in Brownsville.

Tony Martinez, the mayor of Brownsville, said the city was prepared to open the downtown bus station for 24 hours to accommodate migrants. After their release, many migrants board buses to join their relatives already living elsewhere in the United States.

“At this particular point, we are having meetings on a daily basis so that we can monitor the numbers,” Martinez said.

The scramble comes as Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, was scheduled to visit McAllen on Thursday. Some immigrant advocates and elected officials were skeptical of the timing of the releases, suggesting they were part of a Trump administration effort to justify the president’s descriptions of a border in crisis and his declaration of a national emergency. Border Patrol officials deny such claims.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, whose district includes McAllen, criticized the mass release of migrants “without processing, without proper plans for housing and with no course of reasonable action” and questioned the administration’s motives.

“President Trump, Secretary Nielsen, and the entire administration have been presented with the truth — there is no crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border,” he said in the statement. “Their response? Create one.”

The nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, which has been conducting legal interviews with migrants released from Border Patrol custody in the Rio Grande Valley, said it appeared that the government was deliberately releasing them hundreds at a time. Some of those released recently reported that they had been detained for up to eight days, the group said. Normally, Customs and Border Protection holds newly detained migrants for about 72 hours.

Also raising suspicion was a recent drop in the number of migrants prosecuted for illegal border crossings at the federal courthouse in McAllen. Prosecutions during January and February ranged from about 400 to 700 per week. But the number of migrants brought to the courthouse dropped sharply last week, with only 176 prosecuted, and 88 had been charged during the first three days of this week, even though overall apprehensions remained high.

“Families should never be detained, but this practice must be met with skepticism,” Astrid Dominguez of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Rights Center said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Sister Norma Pimentel, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, posted an urgent plea for assistance on Facebook, asking for volunteers in both McAllen and Brownsville, as well chicken and vegetables to make soup, and cereal and bananas for breakfast.

Pimentel later stood outside the respite center in a light rain to help newly arrived migrants off a bus. The respite center received more than 800 migrants on Monday, another 800 on Tuesday and more than 600 by Wednesday afternoon. Pimentel said she was told by Border Patrol to expect up to 800 a day for an unspecified amount of time. In recent months, the most that Catholic Charities had assisted in one day was about 400.

“It’s not typical at all,” she said amid a crowd of migrants in the front lobby. “We were not expecting this. The numbers are very high. They just simply said they’re apprehending big numbers and they’re over capacity, and they need to create the space for those that are just arriving.”

She said city officials had identified two additional sites that can be used to house migrants if the numbers warrant. If those are not enough, the group plans to charter buses to Houston and possibly San Antonio, she said.

As crowded as the respite center was, the conditions in the Border Patrol facilities were even more congested, some migrants who had just been released said.

“There were so many people,” said Albertina, a 29-year-old Honduran mother who had just left the central processing center in McAllen. Albertina, who asked to be identified only by her first name, stood in line at the respite center holding her infant daughter, and said she was going to take a bus to join her family in Tennessee.

A 45-year-old man from Honduras who identified himself as David said he had arrived with his 15-year-old son at a Border Patrol facility Saturday. It was packed, he said.

“Two thousand?” he called out to a friend. “What do you think?”

“Yes, must have been,” the friend said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="4c5731ea-96ec-426d-9912-20fb60ad9f2b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/us/border-patrol-rio-grande-overcrowding.html">The New York Times</a>.

Border Patrol Facilities in Texas Are Overflowing, Prompting Mass Releases in Border Cities

McALLEN, Texas — Border Patrol detention centers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley have soared well past their capacity in recent days, prompting mass releases of migrants onto the streets as local leaders scramble to house and feed hundreds of new arrivals daily.

Border patrol facilities in Texas are overflowing, prompting mass releases in border cities

<h1>McALLEN, Texas — The former president of Mexico was accused of taking a $100 million bribe from El Chapo. A former sheriff in South Texas took far less from El Gallo — about $100,000.</h1>

El Gallo — Tomas Reyes Gonzalez, a drug trafficker now in federal prison — supplied the cash to former Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe Trevino for his re-election campaign. Another former Hidalgo County sheriff took bribes to allow a convicted drug dealer to have conjugal visits at the county jail, including in the jail library and in the sheriff’s private office. Yet another former sheriff in neighboring Cameron County protected and assisted cocaine dealers, and is now Federal Inmate No. 51689-179.

The corruption that took down those three border sheriffs in 1994, 2005 and 2014 continues today. Next month, the former police chief in the town of La Joya is scheduled to go on trial, after he was indicted on drug charges and accused by federal authorities of helping a drug-trafficking organization transport narcotics while working as a police sergeant in Progreso, Texas.

The much-watched trial of the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo — whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán Loera and who was convicted last week in a New York courtroom — shed light on the hold that drug traffickers and their money have on police and politicians in Mexico. One witness at Guzmán’s trial testified that the Mexican president had taken a $100 million bribe in exchange for calling off a nationwide manhunt for the drug kingpin.

But corruption and drug money flow on the U.S. side of the border as well. Trevino and the other imprisoned former lawmen in South Texas are but a sampling. More than 100 local, state and federal law enforcement officials have been indicted on drug-related corruption charges on America’s southwest border since the 1990s. In just one agency, the Border Patrol, officials said 77 employees were arrested or indicted on corruption charges in the fiscal years from 2005 to 2017.

“The money can be an extremely tempting thing,” said Kenneth Magidson, who served as the top federal prosecutor in South Texas from 2011 to 2017 as the U.S. attorney in Houston and whose office prosecuted Trevino and other former law enforcement officials. “It’s hard to say no.”

Trevino had built a decadeslong career in law enforcement; his son is a former Mission, Texas, police officer now in federal prison for his role in a corrupt anti-drug task force. Trevino, now 69, returned to his hometown, McAllen, after he was officially released from federal custody last month, but politely declined to comment. “I don’t want to relive any of that stuff,” he said.

In the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, drug money has a muted yet undeniable presence. It is evident not just in the corruption scandals, but in everyday life, as the illicit profits of the drug trade fuel both legitimate commerce and the underground economy. Drug dealers and their relatives and associates come to the Valley to buy luxury vehicles, build heavily secured mansions, enjoy the night life in the cities of McAllen and Brownsville and gamble for cash in the popular but illegal slot-machine casinos.

W.F. Strong, a professor of communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville and a 30-year resident of the area, called drug money the WD-40 of the Valley. “It’s the oil that makes the machinery work, in all kinds of ways that we don’t fully understand,” Strong said.

No one knows exactly how much of that oil is lubricating the economy.

“There is an underground economy that’s fueled by drug proceeds,” said Will R. Glaspy, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Houston division, which includes the Rio Grande Valley. “You see drug money that’s being utilized to start businesses, prop businesses up. You have legitimate businesses that are unknowingly being supported by illegal drug money. I can’t put a dollar figure on it, and I won’t limit it to just the Rio Grande Valley. It happens in Houston. It happens in San Antonio. It happens in a lot of our border communities.”

Such activity does not lead to cartel gunbattles in parking lots or random street violence. Valley residents overall feel safe, and are safe, as they enjoy the year-round sunshine beneath wind-tussled palm trees in low-crime cities. McAllen had zero murders in 2018, down from seven in 2017. Brownsville had two homicides in 2018, down from six in 2017.

Brownsville’s congressman, Rep. Filemon B. Vela Jr., is so unconcerned about theft that he keeps his keys in his vehicle. To prove his point, after a recent interview at a cafe near the federal courthouse that bears his father’s name, Vela walked to the parking lot, opened the door of his minivan and showed off the keys, on a tray next to the cup holders.

Many residents and officials hesitate to even discuss the presence of drug money, fearing it will perpetuate the false narrative that border cities are chaotic, violent places, an image that is a source of great frustration to many local residents. They said the public corruption in Texas border cities was no different from the public corruption elsewhere around the country.

“Obviously, we have a lot of issues along the border dealing with drug money and attempted bribery of many law enforcement, from our sheriffs to some of our Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement, but that also happens in Chicago and New York and a lot of other places,” said state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat whose district includes Mission and other border towns. “It’s not unique to the Valley, but we’re right on the border, so there’s more of a focus on it.”

When Hinojosa worked as a lawyer in McAllen decades ago, he represented drug dealers who were fighting their charges in court. He had only a few cases, he said.

“Back in the early ‘80s and the ‘70s, it was different in the sense that a lot of the defendants in criminal drug cases would pay cash,” Hinojosa said. “I cannot verify, but I’ve heard attorneys who were offered $50,000, $60,000, $80,000 cash,” he said. “I think law enforcement has really clamped down, not only on drug smuggling but the Wild West culture that used to exist.”

The influence of the drug trade runs just under the surface of Valley life. People sometimes brush up against it unexpectedly.

One March night last year at the Sky Sportsbar and Lounge in Brownsville, the evening was winding down when a young man suddenly pulled out a handgun, told everyone he was a U.S. marshal and ordered the patrons to leave or face arrest. On his neck was a gold Cameron County district attorney’s office badge.

The young man, it turns out, was neither a marshal nor a prosecutor. He was the son of the former head of Mexico’s Gulf cartel. Osiel Cardenas Jr., 26, was arrested that night after officers found him, intoxicated, in the parking lot.

“That’s kind of one of those surreal moments,” said Glaspy with the DEA.

Cardenas’ father was sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in a federal prison in Colorado known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies (the same one where El Chapo is likely to be sent).

In Brownsville, Cardenas was convicted of a firearms charge and impersonating a marshal. A former Sky bar employee said business noticeably dropped in the aftermath of the incident. But that was months ago. Lately, business has bounced back.

This article originally appeared in <a id="fba07b70-58c3-4b83-bee3-eef5ad9ef1f5" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/drugs-crossing-border.html">The New York Times</a>.

El Chapo Highlighted Mexican Corruption, but Drug Money Also Lubricates U.S. Border

El Gallo — Tomas Reyes Gonzalez, a drug trafficker now in federal prison — supplied the cash to former Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe Trevino for his re-election campaign.

El Chapo highlighted Mexican corruption, but drug money also lubricates U.S. border

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Manny Fernandez and Mitchell Ferman

Articles written by the author

Border patrol facilities in Texas are overflowing, prompting mass releases in border cities

El Chapo highlighted Mexican corruption, but drug money also lubricates U.S. border