Abbott claims migrants causing border ‘carnage’
The claim: “What has changed is the carnage that is being caused by the people coming across the border. … Homes are being invaded. Neighborhoods are dangerous, and people are being threatened on a daily basis with guns.” — Gov. Greg Abbott
Abbott made the claim at a news conference as he announced his plan to use state funding and online donations to continue building a wall along the Texas border.
PolitiFact rating: False. Although various law enforcement agencies in border communities have recorded a rash of property crimes attributable to traveling migrants — like breakins, cut fences and car thefts — violent crime is relatively steady compared with last year.
Discussion
The crush of migrants crossing into Texas has spiked by 360 percent so far this year compared with the first half of 2020, according to federal data. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has recorded nearly 400,000 migrant encounters in Texas this year, although a large portion of this total, up to 38 percent in some months, is due to migrants re-entering the country after at least one prior expulsion.
The surge is a product of dras
tic changes in immigration policy between the previous and current presidential administrations combined with a worsening set of economic circumstances in migrants’ origin countries — primarily Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
But to what extent are these migrants causing “carnage,” a word that by all definitions denotes violent killings?
In Kinney County, which includes 16 miles of the Rio Grande, Sheriff Brad Coe says that many of the department’s calls for service relate to the migrants trespassing through private ranches. The fences they cut allow livestock to escape from ranches. The water lines they slash for hydration.
“We’re going nonstop,” Coe said. “There’s no end in sight.”
Then there are the cases of migrants breaking into empty houses or deer blinds, often leaving places disheveled and pantries ransacked. Occasionally, firearms turn up missing.
However, there hasn’t been an increase in violent crimes in Kinney County, Coe said. And the same appears to be true for many counties within the state’s border region. Among all rural border counties that have submitted violent crime data to the state’s Unified Crime Reporting program, violent crimes are occurring at a similar, if not slower, pace this year compared with 2020.
The same is generally true for the border’s urban areas, according to the Unified Crime Reporting data obtained through an open records request. Among the border’s largest cities, El Paso, Brownsville and Edinburg are all on pace to match last year’s violent crime numbers, while Laredo is on pace to reduce its annual crime rate.
Rather, it’s property crimes and migrant rescues that have agencies working overtime.
In Terrell County, the sheriff ’s department is now mostly occupied with migrant-related calls.
“The takings are not necessarily televisions and stereos or anything like that, it’s mostly travel things — clothing, shoes, boots, food, water,” said Terrell County Sheriff Santiago Gonzalez.
But violent crimes and murders? “Oh no. Definitely not,” Gonzalez said.
But car thefts are on the rise in some areas.
In Lavaca County, which is over 230 miles from the border, the sheriff ’s office has recorded more than 10 stolen vehicles so far this year, which is about five times higher than what the county has recorded in years prior.
“Several of those vehicles have been recovered during vehicle pursuits with human cargo between here and the (Rio Grande) Valley,” said Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon.
While state data shows that the number of car thefts in El Paso in the first half of 2021 is already close to last year’s total, other cities — like McAllen and Laredo — have low car theft incidents so far this year.
Nonetheless, stolen vehicles and high-speed pursuits have become increasingly common in the border’s rural areas. While the incidents themselves aren’t considered a violent crime, highspeed pursuits of smugglers with human cargo have often resulted in crashes, which have left many migrants injured or killed.
“Personally, I consider that when a driver of a stolen vehicle flees from us and he crashes into a tree and injures nine or 10 people, and fails to stop and render aid to those people — I call that pretty violent,” Harmon said, referring to a recent pursuit involving his deputies that began in the city of Hallettsville.
Harmon’s point underscores a theme that is wound though many sheriffs’ experiences of the border crisis: The people who are encountering death in the borderlands are the migrants themselves — contrary to Abbott’s claim that it’s the migrants who are bringing “carnage” upon Texans.