Wednesday, October15, 2014

Today was a very conflicting day…well for that matter every day has been conflicting but today was in particular for me. We spent the morning working at Catholic Charities where we meet some wonderful people.  One of the head volunteers, whose name I can’t remember, took us to a park in the afternoon to show us a common border crossing for undocumented workers.  When we made our way to the back of the park, our van noticed a very heavy police presence.  Several people in our van made comments about how the police presence was on overkill and unneeded. 

We got out of our van and made our way down to a boat loading area.  There was a police officer waiting to be picked up by one of the patrol boats on the deck. He was not dressed like any other police officer I had seen before…he was dressed from heavy combat. He had on bullet proof vest, an AR-15 assault rife and buff to protect his identity.

Texas National Guard Securing the Texas Border

The head volunteer from Catholic Charities began to paint the picture of the drug problem on the border. This is what she said:

· Many of the police, judges and officials on the US side were being paid off for the local cartels.

·  Having a military presence was one of the layers in which the US was preventing border towns being paid off by cartels. 

·The heavy police presence doesn’t really bother undocumented people, they have bigger issues to deal with.

·The police force has to have security guard their families because the cartel would attack them if not.

· The last three sheriffs in Cameron county are all in jail.

Right before we were getting back into our vans, one of the police boats pulled up. It was outfitted with AR-15s, bullet proof metal shields, all the man had buffs over their face to conseal their identities and mounted M30s gun racks.  The sights was took us all back.  They were headed into war…not with undocumented works but with the cartels.

Now we knew why there was a heavy police presence at the park…and we were glad they were there.  We left the park just before it closes at 5pm.  The park is not safe to be after hours. 

John Hinkebein