CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — President-elect Donald Trump's deportation plan has Kleberg County Sheriff Richard Kirkpatrick ready to get the job done.
Thomas Homan, Trump's choice to serve as the border czar, said US military assets would be a "force multiplier" in the deportations of millions of migrants.
Kirkpatrick said he expects his jail staff to get training and the resources they need to check on any prisoner and determine whether they're here legally or not.
"The talks of mass deportation is gonna probably take a little bit of planning," he said.
The sheriff said his department stands ready to help in that effort.
"We are vested in performing whatever we can to help aid and stop the illegal immigration," Kirkpatrick said.
The sheriff added that his jail staff will soon be undergoing training through the Department of Justice's '287(g) program' that will help identify inmates illegally in the country.
"Currently today in the jail, we only have the ability to enroll somebody into with their fingerprints," Kirkpatrick said. "When we go through this program and receive the training to do so we will have the ability to query individual's fingerprints to find out whether or not they are here legally and lawfully in this country."
On the other side of the issue its Nancy Vera, she's a board member of the South Texas Human Rights Center in Falfurrias.
She feels the deportation plan, if carried out, will damage the economy.
"And how about those detention centers, are they going to put them in detention centers? How much are those detention centers are they going make? How much are our taxes going to increase as a result? How much is our food going to increase as a result? You know there's a lot of unanswered questions," Vera said. "It's easy to say 'we're sending them all back.' "
She believes it would be wiser to get those migrants documented and allow them to continue to fill all of those jobs they perform on farms, ranches and businesses across the country.