Worth reading…

The McAllen Monitor has a series of articles on the impact on the Valley of the “Great Wall of Texas” — you don’t find much support for it there, and even less where I am. The assumption seems to be that this will push illegal border crossers out into rural areas. What are we supposed to do, quadruple our sheriff’s department? The State and Feds dumped a lot of money into law enforcement last year for political reasons (at least our locals got some new pickup trucks) but local sheriffs can’t even hire new deputies, because they don’t know if their county will be able to afford the unemployment insurance payments once the political funds dry up. And here, we depend on some deputies that are part-timers or volunteers… when we don’t depend on the National Park Service or Border Patrol for routine things like accident calls.

And, when you have a serious accident, you have to take an air ambulance to El Paso. So, with more “illegals” coming through the Big Bend National Park, or the desert, we can expect more people in pretty bad shape. Where are they going to be treated? I don’t see the Feds ponying up for any new hospitals or emergency rooms (and, as it is, it’s much, much cheaper to go to Ojinaga for most medical and dental treatment).

Like this is gonna cut off drug dealers (right now, it’s mostly “backpackers” with loads of marijuana) or anything else. Riiiight.