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Illegals with Border Patrol

By Mark J. Armstrong
The Daily Times

Published September 20, 2006

Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said Tuesday that the five Mexican nationals detained during the weekend in the county jail were released to a U.S. Border Patrol agent Sunday morning.

That information was not initially reported by Kerr County jailers, Hierholzer said, because his office’s policy is that only three people are allowed to release certain public information. Those three are the sheriff, the chief deputy and the chief criminal investigator.

“I can tell you exactly who they were released to and when they were released,” Hierholzer said.

He said the five men, who were detained by the Kerrville Police Department on Saturday as they were walking into Wal-Mart, were released at 8:40 a.m. Sunday to a Border Patrol agent.

The U.S. Border Patrol has been under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security since 2003 and is under the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Spokesmen for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices in Laredo and Del Rio said those offices had no records of the five men, and neither could say which office had jurisdiction over illegal immigrants in Kerr County.

According to Kerrville Police reports, the five men, ages 19 to 36, were seen climbing out of cars on a tractor-trailer parked at Wal-Mart on Saturday afternoon. Officers stopped the men as they were walking into the store.

All five had Mexican identification cards, and had apparently entered the United States illegally.

There was no information available about the driver of the 18-wheeler, about where the tractor-trailer came from or about where the truck was going.