Hole in South Texas border cited in senator’s tweet, but where?

By ALEXANDRIA BACA
Washington Bureau
abaca@dallasnews.com
Published: 27 February 2013 10:32 PM

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. John Cornyn declined to give details Wednesday about a friend said to have hundreds of immigrants crossing his property and into the U.S. every night.

Cornyn cited the homeowner’s complaint in a tweet last week that was met with skepticism.

The senator, in his weekly conference call with Texas reporters, would not identify his friend but said he lives in “South Texas.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has previously defined “South Texas” as running from the tip of Texas to the Del Rio area, spanning eight border counties and three patrol sectors.

Reached later, a Cornyn spokeswoman provided no other information on why the senator wasn’t more specific about the scenario described in his tweet. It stated: “A friend on border sez 300 ppl coming across his property every night. And [Homeland Security chief Janet] Napolitano sez border is under control?”

Cornyn didn’t offer any other substantiation to the tweet but reiterated his view that the border isn’t secure.

“I can tell you also from the anecdotes that I hear from people, from law enforcement and other private property owners in the [Rio Grande] Valley and along the border, that they estimate … they capture between one out of every three or one out of every four people that actually come across,” the senator said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped about 365,000 people trying to cross into the U.S. in 2012 without permission, almost half of them in Texas. The agency does not offer numbers on how many people are estimated to have entered the country illegally without detection.

Some who passed along Cornyn’s tweet questioned the notion of there being a single spot where 300 people cross illegally each night.

But Cornyn said the experience of the person he tweeted about “is not all that out of the ordinary.”

Hole in South Texas border cited in senator