As attention focuses on the border, security failed in attack on Uvalde

Uvalde — More than a week after the worst school shooting in Texas history, one thing is clear: The heavy presence of security forces around this border town did not stop a local shooter from terrorizing the community.

As the investigation into authorities’ poor response to the massacre continues, elected officials and residents say they must consider whether Texas’s inordinate attention to border security has undermined its ability to deal with other dangers inside the border. condition.

This small town of 16,000 people between San Antonio and the Mexican border, about 65 miles north of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, is full of local, state and federal officials who live and work here, mostly to keep out drugs and migrants to the United States.

However, it was border agents who reacted to the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Primary School last week. Another 17 people were injured.

Before the massacre, many locals said that Uvalde “It was barely on the map.”

Spanning approximately 8 square miles, the town is made up of single-family homes and commercial establishments only.

The west side is mostly lower class, while the east side tends to be more affluent, a vestige of a segregated past that still haunts its inhabitants.

HEB is the only grocery store, there is a Starbucks and a post office. The city only has five council members and 16 police officers.

Sprawling ranches and sprawling empty fields are the only thing that separates one corporation from another, like the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is about to set up a checkpoint.

Further south, some 10,000 Texas National Guardsmen are deployed along the border.

Of those, some 6,400 are in border counties, with the rest in various support roles elsewhere, according to testimony from senior department officials in April.

There are also about 1,600 DPS agents in support of Operation Lone Star, which Governor Greg Abbott launched in March 2021.

Operation Lone Star has already cost the state some $4 billion since it began, and DPS has paid at least $68 million in overtime to officers dispatched to the border.

Commanders of the corporation have previously testified that up to 1,600 of its 4,200 agents are stationed at the border at certain periods.

Of the roughly $180 million the department spent on overtime from March 2021 through February, nearly 40% was spent by elements participating in the border operation.

State records indicate that in that period — the first year of Operation Lone Star — DPS spent more on overtime than almost any other corporation.

Last year state leaders funneled hundreds of millions of dollars from other departments to pay for the deployment of thousands of Texas National Guardsmen to the border.

The governor’s office has helped DPS fill budget gaps in the past.

Last year he provided more than $30 million for his border operations from June through August, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said.

In January, the newspaper Uvalde News-Leader reported that Uvalde police received $532,000 from Operation Lone Star.

That amount is in addition to the Police Department’s $4 million budget, which represents just under 40% of the city’s general fund.

Uvalde is located in the Del Rio sector of the Border Patrol.

In recent months this sector has been the object of attention due to the large number of migrants who cross the border through Eagle Pass.

In the border strip, the different corporations usually work together, as they did during the Uvalde massacre; But sometimes it seems that all eyes are on stopping illegal immigration, criticize some officials.

In Del Rio, Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez, a former DPS officer, agreed that priorities need to be redefined, but only up to a point.

After the massacre, he sent eight agents to help in Uvalde, immediately held meetings with community stakeholders and pushed for more officers to be assigned to him.

“The more officers we have to protect our community, the better off we are,” he said, adding that he has requested up to eight more officers.

Del Rio currently has only 25 patrol officers for a population of about 48,000.

“In terms of border security, we are going to be with our federal partners, but at the same time I have to ensure the safety of my community and my citizens.”

Border security is a federal responsibility, he said, but “the system is broken,” noting the large number of migrants who crossed through Del Rio last year and the recent wave of migrants — some 6,000 a week — who have crossed through Eagle Pass this year.

“The thing is we need immigration reform, but there hasn’t been political will in Washington” in decades, so it’s up to communities like Del Rio, Uvalde and the governor to do something, said Martinez, a staunch Democrat who has been sheriff for four years. periods.

As for Abbott, Martinez said, the criticism “can go either way. Yes, we have to find a better balance between border security and public safety, but he’s trying to protect the state of Texas… And yet, we can’t afford to let what happened in Uvalde happen in Del Rio. This is not a black and white problem.”

For his part, state senator Roland Gutiérrez, a Democrat from San Antonio who represents Uvalde, directly accused the governor before The Dallas Morning News saying Abbott “has created chaos along the border.”

Gutierrez called Abbott’s claims that the border is being overrun by migrants “fictional” and said that the National Guard and DPS elements stationed at the border are nothing more than “props” in his re-election campaign.

“Presumably he is issuing traffic tickets and lifting migrants off the street; he’s sending them to Dilley,” he said, referring to the largest migrant detention center in South Texas, “or he’s busing them to Washington, DC, for political purposes.”

“Why don’t you think, for example, of doing exercises together with the locals to learn how to deal with shooters?”

Rosie Ruiz, 63, who attended Robb Elementary decades ago, witnessed parents yelling at police officers to enter the room.

“What are they waiting for? Come in, save our children,” Ruiz recalled the screams of the parents.

“When we needed them, they behaved like cowards,” Ruiz said.

“If we don’t wake up now, when? We have to honor these children by changing things, holding these people accountable.”

In the end, it was not the school police, nor the local police, nor the DPS agents, but agents from the Border Patrol—the federal government—the heroes of the people on the day of the massacre.

According to a Border Patrol representative, four officers formed a joint and entered the classroom.

One was holding a shield and three discharged their weapons, although it is unclear who hit and killed the shooter.

After the massacre, the state committed to providing more resources to Uvalde, with an emphasis on mental health.

Abbott declared Uvalde a disaster area, which speeds up the allocation of funds.

The Texas Department of Emergency Management will make a family resource center available to Uvalde residents seeking help with mental health or other needs.

Gutiérrez considers that this is far from being enough.

“If I were the governor of the state, I would come with my wallet,” Gutierrez said.

“But he doesn’t have the strength to do the right thing; he just wants to come, promise little and do nothing. Do something, geez.”

State Rep. James White, R-Houston, chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety.

White defends Operation Lone Star, but said that we need to stop “bashing about” politics and focus energy on preventing this from happening again.

“Right now the question is not to find a balance, but to be up to the challenge and the expectations in Uvalde, to exceed the expectations in our investigation into what happened in that community, what went wrong, so that this does not happen again. pass,” White said.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican and strong supporter of Operation Lone Star, told KSAT-TV that DPS officers “have been a godsend to our community.”

Several times he has appeared on Fox News to denounce what he calls President Biden’s “open borders policy.”

He has also criticized Abbott for not building a border wall.

McLaughlin did not respond to an interview request.

According to DPS Director Steven McCraw, an hour and 10 minutes elapsed between the first 911 call and Border Patrol officers confronting the shooter, who by then had fired at least 142 bullets at the school.

The pain of the community is unfathomable. People continue to line up to lay flowers on makeshift altars that seem to bloom daily.

Manuel Garza said that he lost two nieces in the massacre, and blames former President Donald “Trump for lighting the fuse that has not gone out until today. All that talk about criminals this, criminals that, Mexicans this, Mexicans that, diverted the attention of our community towards the border.”

Lori Contreras, who lives near Robb Elementary, commented:

“It’s all border security, saving us (from migrants), protecting us from them, but immigrants come to work, not to kill us… Where were (the authorities) when we needed them most? We feel abandoned.”

Daniel Álvarez, 54, is blunt: If things don’t change in Uvalde, the town is in danger.

“The town is going to change and the policemen who were wrong are going to be devalued, they are going to give in when they bring in new people,” Álvarez said.

“It’s going to change like 9/11 changed everything; This is going to change everything in the town.”

But change will not come easily, Contreras said, “because people don’t vote, we don’t participate.”

There has not been a single year since 1988 in which more than 64% of Uvalde County’s registered voters have turned out to vote.

The year in which there was the greatest influx of voters, 1988, 63.5% went out to vote. The year in which the least, 2014, was 31.5%.

In the last 17 years, the average has been 47.6%.

“That has to change, because you already see the result of those empty promises,” Contreras said.

Of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election, 60% voted for Trump, who campaigned on promises to build a wall along the border.

“When things have been going well for a long time, people don’t think about changing their leadership,” said Wanda Bingham, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from the local high school, laying yellow flowers on an altar built on Main Street.

“But this tragedy has made them see the reality that, in the end, they have the power.”

With information from Allie Morris and Imelda Garcia

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