EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Citing a lack of resources, El Paso County officials are asking Texas to use its own judges and jail space to hold migrants arrested at the border wall on state charges.
The plea comes after the Texas Department of Public Safety on Friday arrested another 200 migrants on rioting charges after some cut razor wire the state had placed along the Rio Grande, and tried to make their way to the Border Patrol on the other side.
“It looks like we’ll be able to process 140 to 145 (by) today. […] We’re trying to process 20-30 at a time,” County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told KTSM on Tuesday. “We can handle this one, but if tomorrow we have a number this size… no more (jail) space and the District Attorney would not have the resources to process them.”
Migrants arrested at the border, either by the state or federal agents, are taken to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility. If they face local charges, they’re transferred to the jails.
The Downtown County Jail normally can house up to 1,010 inmates but is undergoing construction that robs it of 300 to 350 beds a day. The Far East El Paso Jail Annex can hold another 1,800. County officials said Tuesday that the Jail Annex was at 94 percent capacity, while the Downtown facility was at capacity given the missing beds.
Additionally, the county loses money when the state brings in inmates and the county has to turn down federal prisoners. State inmates cost the county $110 a day, while federal inmates bring in $85 to $87 a day.
Samaniego suggests DPS take the migrants to the Rogelio Sanchez State Jail in El Paso or other state-run facilities.
County officials late last month raised a red flag after Texas began funneling 200 migrants arrested on state criminal mischief and/or rioting charges. A viral video shows a throng of asylum-seekers overrunning a line of Texas Army National Guard soldiers on March 21.
The arrests of migrants on state charges continued in the following days. And last Friday, the Guard again took 200 into custody the same day a Guard member from Indiana allegedly shot at a migrant allegedly stabbing another in the vicinity of the river.
The arrests continued Sunday, as a video obtained by Border Report appears to show.
Border Report reached out to DPS and the Texas Department of Emergency Management for information on Friday’s incidents and is awaiting a response.
The Border Patrol said its agents on Friday were alerted to a group of migrants climbing the state chain-link barrier just north of the Rio Grande near Gate 36 – which has become a gathering point for asylum-seekers trying to surrender.
The Border Patrol says migrants illegally crossed the border after cutting the concertina wire along the river, collapsing the chain-link fence. The action constitutes an illegal entry as far as the federal government is concerned.
But Texas insists on charging the migrants when a state crime, such as trespassing, criminal mischief, destruction of property or rioting is involved.
Samaniego says that Texas expecting the fencing or the Guard to deter migrants from coming across is unrealistic. Neither the March 21 incident nor the 200-plus arrests that left those individuals facing jail time and loss of immigration benefits did that.
“They think it’s a deterrent to have officers, but (the migrants) have come in for months at a time … once they cross into Colombia or other countries, the likelihood they will stop is (null),” the county judge said. “Barbwire compared to what they’ve gone through is nothing. Once they are in that situation (of mobility), they’re desperate, they are going to be coming through.”