Brackettville Businesses, Land Owners Struggling with Human Smuggling; Reality of Illegal Immigration: Local Leader Says, ‘Dead Bodies All Over the Whole of the Border’; Kinney County EMS pushed to the limit with human smuggling cases

Brackettville businesses, land owners struggling with human smuggling

People who call Kinney County home are feeling the effects of human smuggling they say it has changed their whole way of life in Brackettville.

Ziggy’s Roadside BBQ serves up the classic and good conversations between Kinney County neighbors.

“Everybody supports everybody,” Isabel Zigmond said.

The restaurant’s dining area is filled with law enforcement for the afternoon rush.

“You hear sirens, you know, and you already know what it is. It’s not an accident. It’s, you know, rarely somebody falling or whatever. It’s smuggling,” Zigmond said.

Isabel Zigmond and her husband have owned Ziggy’s since 2013. When they came to Brackettville they said they felt safe, but that’s changed with the rise of human smuggling.

“All these people are running through and I mean, really, they don’t care who they hit or, you know, what happens,” Zigmond said. —>READ MORE HERE

Reality of Illegal Immigration: ‘Dead Bodies All Over the Whole of the Border,’ Local Leader Says:

It was 5:15 p.m. on a Monday afternoon and the 13th hour of Sheriff Brad Coe’s workday.

“Phone call came at 4 a.m. this morning,” said Coe, the sheriff of Kinney County, which borders Mexico.

A human smuggler had been caught trying to sneak illegal immigrants across the border into the U.S. The sheriff counted aloud, recalling the five suspected human smugglers who were caught before 8 a.m. that day, Sept. 26.

Between January and June of this year, officials caught a total of 292 suspected human smugglers in Kinney County, which has a population of about 3,600. Last year, law enforcement in Kinney County caught 169 smuggling suspects.

In the first six months of 2022, “we have arrested 1,659 illegal aliens,” said Coe, a Republican who took office in 2017.

The migrants aren’t staying in his county, the sheriff said, but the local community is beginning to feel the effects of illegal immigration.

The heartbeat of industry in this border community is ranching and hunting, including hunting on exotic game ranches.

“The hunters, they come in, they lease property, [spending] $30,000 or $40,000 a year,” Coe said. “And then if they quit coming, [and] they are starting to slow down because of some of the stuff that’s walking through, [the landowners will] lose that money.”

The sheriff says it’s not uncommon for the hunters to return to their cabin or trailer at the beginning of the season and find that it has been broken into. —>READ MORE HERE

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+++++Kinney County EMS pushed to the limit with human smuggling cases+++++

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