NUECES COUNTY, Texas — The surge of immigrants crossing the border from Mexico and into our state has been a highly publicized crisis situation. The Biden administration has been scrambling to try and find ways to handle all of the immigrants. Some have been given bus tickets or plane tickets to all points north.
Nueces County Sheriff John Hooper said Border Patrol officials are trying to figure out a way to send some of those immigrants to Kleberg and Nueces County. The Border Patrol wanted to use the department's 50 passenger prisoner transport bus to get that done.
"He was asking if we would assist him in moving immigrants who are in the country illegally from the border area up into Kleberg and the Corpus Christi area, Nueces County and I advised him that the Nueces County Sheriff's Office would not be assisting in that," Sheriff Hooper said.
The sheriff added that he had been hearing for weeks about the plan and what would be done with those immigrants once they arrived here.
"We had information going back two weeks that there was a good, high likelihood that Border Patrol would be transporting into Corpus Christi and dropping off in front of social service agencies, governmental and non-governmental social service agencies," Sheriff Hooper said.
Some of those social agencies could be places like Catholic Charities, which in the Rio Grande area has been helping thousands of immigrants.
Now, Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez said the Border Patrol also asked him if he had a bus to handle the immigrants, but the sheriff said he told them he only had a van and that the department uses it all the time.
"For awhile they've been trying to bring them up in vans and drop them off at the local Valero convenient store or Stripes and it's not a bus depot, the bus stops there, but the bus I'm thinking about is already full because they're already coming from the valley," Martinez said. "You could see 100 or so people just kind of filtering around."
The sheriff tells 3News that he told Border Patrol officials that wasn't a good idea. He pointed out that Falfurrias is a small town and they don't have the resources to deal with that.
We contacted Border Patrol about an interview on this issue and officials declined our request.
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