Starr County,\none of the poorest in Texas, has turned down state financial assistance to help\nstanch the surge of illegal aliens crossing the Rio Grande. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Refusing to declare a border emergency, County Judge Eloy Vera<\/a> worries instead that jailing criminal migrants would cost Starr millions of dollars in federal contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe only\nhave 270 beds, of which we lease out to the feds and neighboring counties quite\na few. And we receive around $3-$3.5 million annually, from these leases. If we\nfill them with our local prisoners, that goes to zero,\u201d Vera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vera\u2019s reasoning strikes more Starr County residents as absurd, since local officials, by refusing to declare a border emergency, are foregoing Operation Lone Star<\/a> (OLS) grants to fund additional jail space and law-enforcement resources. Residents marvel that Wilson County, two hours north of the border, recently received $400,000 in OLS funds while Starr didn\u2019t even apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe\npublic\u2019s attitude is changing here,\u201d Dina Garcia-Pe\u00f1a told FAIR in an\ninterview. \u201cWhen you have 300 people crossing over the river in a single day\ncan we really say there\u2019s not a problem? It feels like an invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Garcia-Pe\u00f1a, who runs the local news page El Tejano<\/em> on Facebook, reports that Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers arrest the vast majority of human traffickers and criminal aliens in the county. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Vera complains that DPS\u2019s presence is \u201cunnecessary\u201d<\/a> and somehow hampers economic development, state troopers boost business at local restaurants and fill hotels to capacity every night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yvette Hernandez, a local businesswoman, denounces Vera\u2019s claim as \u201chypocritical\u201d and \u201cuntrue.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a drug lord mentality\u201d that rationalizes and accepts cross-border criminal enterprises, she told FAIR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While other South Texas counties have sent more than 1,000 criminal aliens to recently opened state detention centers, Starr and the larger downriver counties<\/a> of Hidalgo (McAllen) and Cameron (Brownsville) have yet to refer a single offender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meantime, car chases, roadside bailouts and even gunfire from across the Rio Grande<\/a> terrorize Starr communities. It is no coincidence that the highest crime zones<\/a> are clustered around the county\u2019s narrow river crossings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If Judge Vera\ngot serious about leveraging state laws and OLS programs to arrest and detain\nillegal aliens, would migrants keep coming to Starr County in droves? Might\nthis desperately poor county find that enhancing public safety is, in fact, the\nessential building block for both social order and civic prosperity? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Starr County, one of the poorest in Texas, has turned down state financial assistance to help stanch the surge of illegal aliens crossing the Rio Grande. Refusing to declare a border emergency, County Judge Eloy Vera worries instead that jailing criminal migrants would cost Starr millions of dollars in federal contracts. \u201cWe only have 270<\/p>\n