Located a mere 30 miles from the Rio Grande border with Mexico, sheriff’s office deputies in the rural county thwarted 15 migrant smuggling cases in the last seven days.
A human smuggler runs his vehicle through a private ranch fence and crashes the vehicle into a tree. In one of the 15 cases from the recent seven-day period, deputies initiated a vehicle pursuit that moved from a rural county roadway into the city of La Pryor, Texas. The pursuit ended after a Texas Highway Patrol trooper managed to successfully deploy a tire deflation device.The driver in that incident was found to be a Mexican national who required medical treatment after allegedly swallowing a heroin-filled balloon.
Zavala County is a challenging environment for the deputies patrolling the county’s multitude of roadways. These include numerous farm-to-market roads that allow smugglers easy egress from the border region. The migrants the deputies encounter in the smuggling cases are those who first manage to escape apprehension at the border.by Breitbart Texas, nearly 51,000 migrants were reported as known got-aways by the Border Patrol.