![]() They adapt to our inability to do our job."īack at the Hudspeth County Jail, it's not as exciting now that the tour buses are gone and there are no more famous mugshots. "Granted, they lose their load, but they're able to make it up the next day or the day after and find a different route. "That's a shame when drug smugglers can walk free," Cabrera says. Brooks has such a tiny budget that it, too, refuses checkpoint cases.Ĭhris Cabrera, a Border Patrol union representative in the Rio Grande Valley, says traffickers caught with dozens of pounds of pot are routinely released, and they learn to exploit this loophole. ![]() There's a Border Patrol inspection station in Brooks County, Texas, that catches lots of narcotics coming out of the Rio Grande Valley. The Border Patrol does not release numbers on individuals who have their narcotics confiscated and are not arrested. A lot of drugs pass through the Border Patrol inspection station in Brooks County, where La Grulla is located it, too, is refusing to take checkpoint cases. "When we're trying to be smarter with federal resources, both from a law enforcement standpoint and a judicial standpoint, many of these cases just don't belong in federal court," Glaspy says.Ī car filled with bales of marijuana is seen at a police station in La Grulla, Texas, in 2013. Will Glaspy, special agent in charge of the El Paso DEA, says if he decides to take a case, they have to send agents 85 miles to Sierra Blanca to pick up the suspects and the dope. ![]() West says the Drug Enforcement Administration only gets involved when the amount is more than 40 to 50 pounds of marijuana. Department of Justice is less and less interested in low-level possession cases. West blames federal authorities for not prosecuting the marijuana cases themselves. "Making sure your community is safe and prosecuting crime is not a profit-making business. "What I wonder is why is it possible to arrest Willie Nelson and not anybody else?" asks Jaime Esparza, district attorney for El Paso and two neighboring counties. The fact that West won't accept any checkpoint cases because he wants somebody to pay him for his prisoners rubs some people the wrong way. Like a lot of poor Texas counties, Hudspeth built an oversize jail so it can rent out excess space to other counties at $45 a night per prisoner. "When I occupy one of those beds it takes away from a paying customer back there," the sheriff says. National Security Sheriff To Texas Border Town: 'Arm Yourselves' I'm not gonna do the federal government's job." "I just have a problem making my local taxpayers foot the bill for America's problem. "I don't have a problem whatsoever going out there and arresting them," West says. ![]() ![]() Most of the cannabis holders were issued a citation, released and told to pay a $400 fine later - though many never paid up.īut for the past year, Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West has refused to take any more "checkpoint cases," even those involving commercial quantities of marijuana worth thousands of dollars. Here's how it used to work: The Border Patrol would hold the suspect and the stash, the sheriff in the sleepy town of Sierra Blanca would send a deputy out to pick them up, then they'd be booked into the jail in Hudspeth County - an area larger than Connecticut filled with greasewood, cactus, humpbacked mountains and only 5,000 people. He says they occupied two full-time deputies and one-fourth of the space in the county jail. After federal grants used to help pay for housing offenders arrested on drug charges dried up, Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County, Texas, stopped taking any more cases from the checkpoint. ![]()
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