El Paso County sheriff: Border security benefits if local law enforcement better funded
Last summer the Texas Department of Public Safety prepared a report on “Operation: Strong Safety.” The operation wasmeant to bolster border security.
Click here for the full report.
The report finds that if you saturate the border with enough agents it will be safer. It recommends hiring hundreds more federal agents. But El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles’ concern is it is his deputies doing a lot of the dirty work.He asks, shouldn’t his office be better funded instead?
“Our community is really taking on a burden, solely because we live along the border, that other communities don’t deal with,” Wiles said. “Like Lubbock, they don’t get called to the border, and asked to take on these cases, but we do.”
Leaders in Austin told the Department of Public Safety to report on a border security operation it started last summer. What they found is if they soak the border with patrols,apprehensions of undocumented immigrants go down,meaning less crime spreading to the rest of the country. They recommend funding more federal agencies.
Operation Strong Safety reports the border will only be secure when all smuggling events are detected and interdicted. And while that sounds highly improbable, Wiles said it’s not impossible — it’s just a matter of where the resources go.
His resources are constantly being put into cases the feds deem minor,such as catching someone at the port of entry with a bag of marijuana.
“I’ve got a person a deputy who’s not patrolling our neighborhoods,” Wiles said. “Only because I’m on the border and this was discovered by a federal agent.”
Wiles said to keep the border and our streets secure, he needs more officers.
But protecting Texas’ porous borders is a national responsibility that local law enforcement agencies help carry,and not something, Wiles says, that should only be shouldered by local taxpayers.
“So I think having funding available to border communities to help offset some of that impact could certainly be a benefit,” Wiles said.
Wiles said the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition is currently lobbying in Austin,hoping to garner support and funding for these ideas.
