Search and Rescue: On remote Brooks County ranch, Border Patrol agent first tries to save lives
July 5, 2008 - 10:18PM
By Jared Taylor, The Monitor

BROOKS COUNTY - It's just before noon on the tangled wood of the La Copa Ranch.

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Rick Garcia makes his first discovery of the day.

Through the web of mesquite brush and weeds, the footsteps of three immigrants crunch louder on the blanket of dead leaves as they approach the weathered ranch path.

Garcia's partner, K-9 agent Chico, just found the immigrants struggling through the woods.

Garcia asks the exhausted group in Spanish whether any of them have weapons, then how long they have been traveling on foot.

"Two days," one woman replied in Spanish.

The group of three - one man and two women - sit at the edge of the caliche path while Garcia finds out they had made it there all the way from El Salvador. Five others were with the immigrants, they said - including a pregnant woman - and should still be in the area pushing north through the wooded plain.

"We feel scared for the pregnant girl," one of the women says.

The docile group moves into the shade of a nearby tree and awaits another agent to transport them out of the woods - presumably to begin another long journey, except this time back south.

As the temperature approached 100 degrees, Garcia, a 40-year-old supervisor for the Border Patrol's search-and-rescue team known as BORSTAR, said he was concerned for the pregnant woman's ability to survive such brutal weather.

He didn't want her - or any of the others - to become another immigrant who dies on the journey north.

While the Border Patrol's primary task is to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking into the country, saving their lives is just as much of a crucial mission, said Rio Grande Valley sector spokesman Daniel Doty said.

To try to prevent immigrant deaths in the scorching summer heat, the Border Patrol has stepped up its BORSTAR operations this summer.

Each member of the Valley sector's 12-person BORSTAR - which stands for Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue - is fully equipped with the latest in first aid and rescue equipment, including stretchers, intravenous fluids and a portable defibrillator, said Manuel Vasquez III, who commands the local unit.

"We'll try to help them medically or any way we can," Vasquez said.

For Garcia, as he learns of the five others still wandering the sandy ranchlands of Brooks County, that means he will probably be working the area until dark, hoping to claim the immigrants before South Texas' unyielding heat does.

Since October, 71 immigrants have died in the Valley sector, which stretches from Brownsville to Roma and as far north along the Gulf Coast headed toward Victoria. But BORSTAR agents have rescued 182 immigrants among the more than 44,000 people detained.

Oftentimes, coyotes - individuals who smuggle people into the United States - lie to immigrants about the distance between the border and major cities, where they hope work prospects await.

"They've been told it's only a two-hour walk to Houston," Garcia said. "It's pretty bad. They don't have any idea."

Miriam Medel, spokeswoman for the Mexican consulate in McAllen, said migrants are often blind to the dangers of entrusting their lives to the coyotes.

"All of them are lied to," she said.

Garcia pressed on the rest of his afternoon scouring a mile-wide radius from his government-issue Chevrolet Tahoe, as well as on foot through the brush.

He continued to look for the pregnant woman and the rest of her group, while other agents in the area moved on to other leads.

Finally, about four hours after he and his fellow agents picked up the three Salvadorans, he finds a clue.

Footprints lead across one of the dirt ranch roads and into another part of the ranch, north of the land he had tracked for hours that day.

Garcia never did find the pregnant woman or the others Monday afternoon. But as clouds moved in and raindrops cooled the summer air, he gave pause.

"If she was in real trouble, she would have stayed back," he said of the pregnant immigrant. "But we need to cover it as much as possible - just in case."

‘Just in case'

Sandy ranchlands

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articl ... ranch.html