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confusion and mistakes
Nerio was one of the first to be arrested under Abbott's new border security initiative meant to jail migrants on state criminal charges, like trespassing. Instead of approaching the wrought-iron gates where county officials said a large majority of migrants turn themselves in to federal authorities, the couple had entered the country onto a private company’s stretch of land.
As the trooper’s SUV took off down the dusty road, Nerio was presumably off to be booked at a just-erected processing tent outside the local jail, have bail set over Zoom by a retired judge from elsewhere in the state, then sent more than 100 miles away to a Texas prison recently converted into a jail for migrants. Left behind, his wife would be taken to the federal immigration processing center, to begin deportation or asylum proceedings.
But the hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety officers deployed to the region are only supposed to arrest unaccompanied men for trespassing if they cross the Texas-Mexico border onto private property, the Val Verde County sheriff said. Families and children are supposed to be handed over to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
“DPS should not have separated the husband and wife. That’s a family unit,” Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez said, minutes after witnessing the arrest.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent, who declined to answer questions, also appeared visibly confused by the arrest. When he realized the crying woman was Nerio’s wife, he furrowed his brow and approached the trooper to get his contact information..https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/30/texas-greg-abbott-border-security/But the sheriff isn’t always on site, and he said state troopers, cycled into the region for two-week stints, often aren’t clear on what they’re supposed to be doing.
“Situations like that happen all the time,” Joe Frank Martinez said Friday
