EXCLUSIVE — The sheriff of a county on Texas’s southern border with Mexico will start running criminal background checks on each illegal immigrant his deputies encounter.
Starting Thursday, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe has directed his law enforcement staff not to turn over to Border Patrol people who are caught after crossing the border unlawfully until they have run their information to see if they have active or outstanding warrants.
Coe described it as a “cumbersome” process but worth it to get any wanted individuals to face justice.
“It’s cumbersome to do it, but we rarely run a criminal history check on everyone we catch,” Coe said. “We’re going to start running criminal checks on all of them and see what we’re missing … if they have an active warrant.”
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Coe anticipates illegal immigration attempts will rise in the coming months, making this new endeavor that much more challenging.
“Between now and January, when the new Congress gets sworn in, I think we’re going to see a huge increase,” said Coe. “We’re already catching them left and right.”
Coe’s deputies are among law enforcement statewide who have signed on to Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative to boost the police presence at the border amid the influx of illegal immigrants since shortly after President Joe Biden took office.
Many Border Patrol agents have been pulled from the field to transport, process, and watch over the higher-than-normal number of people in custody, leaving the border unwatched in places. Local and state police deployed to the region have focused on identifying and pulling over vehicles that are smuggling people who made it across the border and were picked up by smugglers.
Border Patrol agents frequently arrest illegal immigrants who, when screened through national criminal databases, come back matching the identity of someone wanted in another country or state.
For example, agents apprehended three illegal immigrants in separate incidents over the Thanksgiving holiday who were later found to be sex offenders who had abused children and been previously deported.
In one incident, a Honduran man convicted of indecent liberties with a child in North Carolina in 2007 and deported to Guatemala in 2009 was apprehended after crossing the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass as part of a small group.
A second Guatemalan man convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child in Houston earlier this year and deported in May was also caught last week.
The third arrest occurred on Thanksgiving Day. A Honduran man who crossed with a group of 15 others was taken into custody and determined to have been convicted of indecency with a child sexual contact in the Austin suburb of Pflugerville. He was sentenced to five years behind bars and deported in 2020 but was encountered last week as he tried to enter the country illegally.
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By running criminal history checks early on, Coe hopes to get anyone with a warrant to where they are wanted faster.
Police and sheriff’s departments will be contacted by Coe’s deputies and informed that a wanted person is in custody and asked if the department would like to send officers to transfer that person into their custody to face charges for previous criminal allegations.
