JIM HOGG COUNTY, Texas — Jim Hogg County Sheriff's Department deputies are being overrun with cartel smuggling operations, officials tell 3News.
Recently, deputies followed what they thought was a FedEx truck through Hebbronville.
Video shows that once the truck stops, it was not driving around delivering packages but instead was loaded down with over a dozen immigrants.
Unfortunately, the chief deputy was standing in their way when they piled out of the van.
”They just kind of ran over him like a stampede and he ended up with a broken rib that video you can see where those guys are just bailing and this is in the middle of town,” Sheriff Kiko Alarcon, Jim Hogg County, said.
They would later find out that the truck was part of a cartel smuggling operation and was only painted to look official.
"It turned out to be cloned FedEx fan it was loaded with 15 or 16 people in there," Alarcon said.
Alarcon has been with the department for 30 years and for the last 20 years, he’s been a sheriff here. He said this FedEx smuggling operation is just the latest effort by the cartels to move immigrants through his county.
Besides clone vehicles, the sheriff said the cartels are now hiring drivers as young as 15-years-old.
"What we’re seeing a lot of also is people are trying to get kids to transport these illegals from point A to point B and they’re enticing these kids with a lot of money," Alarcon said.
"You get a 15, 16-year-old and tell them that the risk isn’t that high and they won’t do anything to you because you’re a juvenile. You pay them $500.”
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The sheriff said the smuggling operations are now working 24 hours a day seven days a week. And with just three deputies working during the day and having to cover 1,200 square miles, he doesn’t have the manpower to handle that kind of volume and neither does Border Patrol.
"I know from talking with Border Patrol administrators, they do say they’re shorthanded because they have people going down to do processing and stuff like that so we are shorthanded all around, pretty much everyone is shorthanded," Alarcon said.
Congressman Vicente Gonzalez agrees that more manpower and technology needs to be moved to the area.
"Clearly, we do need more boots on the ground but more than anything we need to have more cutting edge technology on the border,” Gonzalez said.
That would be welcomed in Jim Hogg County as this sheriff said his deputies can’t be everywhere. But, they will continue to try and stop the smuggling operations that are overwhelming them right now.
RELATED: Property owner in Brooks County says he will build his own border wall if Gov. Abbott does not
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