Frequent school lockdowns in Uvalde play role in tragedy
UVALDE, Texas — Teachers and students at Robb Elementary School knew the safety protocols when an 18-year-old with an AR-15 style rifle entered the building in May. Dozens of times in the previous four months alone, the campus had gone into lockdown or issued security alerts.
Not because of active shooter scares — because of nearby, often high-speed pursuits of migrants coming from the U.S.-Mexico border.
A generation of students in America has grown up simulating lockdowns for active shooters, or worse, experiencing the real thing. But in South Texas, another unique kind of classroom lockdown occurs along the state’s 1,200-mile southern border: hunkering down because Border Patrol agents or state police are chasing migrants who are trying to evade apprehension.
The frequency of lockdowns and security alerts in Uvalde — nearly 50 between February and May alone, according to school officials — are now viewed by investigators as one of the tragic contributors to how a gunman was able to walk into a fourthgrade classroom unobstructed and slaughter 19 children and two teachers. Although a slow and bungled police response remains the main failure, a damning new report by the Texas House says recurring lockdowns in Uvalde created a “diminished sense of vigilance.”
With a new school year now just weeks away in heavily patrolled South Texas, there are worries the lockdowns will resume and deepen the trauma for scarred students in Uvalde, as migrant crossings remain high and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continues expanding a massive border security operation.
“That’s what it probably was, just complacency, because it does happen on a frequent basis,” said Uvalde County Justice of the Peace Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz Jr., who had to identify the bodies of the dead at Robb Elementary.
The new findings that a culture of lockdowns in Uvalde played some role in the failures on May 24 reflects how one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history intersected with immigration policies and thousands of Border Patrol agents, National Guard members and state police assigned to apprehend migrants and stop drug traffickers. Of the nearly
400 law enforcement officers at the scene of Robb Elementary, more than half were Border Patrol agents or state police, according to the report.
On Tuesday, over the span of just 20 minutes, eight state police vehicles and Border Patrol SUVs cruised through Uvalde’s central square, less than a mile from Robb Elementary.
Uvalde is about an hour’s drive from the border with Mexico, located at the crossroads of two major state highways. Nearby are the cities of Pearsall, Dilley and Karnes — all of which have immigration detention centers with some of the nation’s highest populations. More than 4,500 detainees in total were at the three facilities as of June, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.