Helicopters and High-Speed Chases: Inside Texas’ Push to Arrest Migrants
Texas is using state law enforcement in an unusual way in an attempt to stem illegal border crossings. The tactic is raising constitutional concerns and transforming life in one small town.
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BRACKETTVILLE, Texas — Magdaleno Ruiz Jimenez huddled under a waxing moon in the rough brush of a Texas ranch. His journey to the small border community of Brackettville had been long, about 1,300 miles from his home in Mexico. But now a drone was buzzing overhead.
A lone officer, Sgt. Ryan Glenn, emerged from the darkness. He had a flashlight and a screen with coordinates for where Mr. Jimenez and six other men could be found on the cold caliche, blobs of heat visible to an infrared camera on the overhead drone. More officers soon arrived.
“I spent everything to get here,” Mr. Jimenez said after the officers wrested him and the other men from the brush.
The men assumed they had been detained by immigration officers for illegally crossing into the United States. They were wrong. Instead, they were arrested on charges of trespassing on a vast private ranch by highway patrol officers from the Texas state police.
For several months now, Texas has been engaged in an effort to repurpose the tools of state law enforcement to stem the sudden increase of people crossing illegally into the country.
Inside the Texas Operation to Arrest Migrants
Inside the Texas Operation to Arrest Migrants
I spent five days on the Texas-Mexico border where state police officers have been given a new and unusual task: arrest migrants who illegally cross from Mexico for trespassing, a misdemeanor.
Here’s what I learned →
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