BREWSTER COUNTY, Texas — In September of 2021 Gov. Abbott signed SB576 which is known as an anti-smuggling bill. Since that bill has become law, Sheriff's Departments like the one in Brewster county have increased their arrests by a lot.
Most of them caught traveling up from the border in cars or RV's.
"We have had RV's with 40 and 50 people in them," said Brewster County Sheriff, Ronny Dodson. We've had a truck on two different equations that we caught the smuggler, we got the immigrants out and we go back an hour later and find out there's still another immigrant inside the tool box, you know those white tool boxes on the back of a truck, sometimes two, as you can imagine that's like being in a coffin."
Since SB 576 passed, the Brewster county Sheriff's Department has made a lot more arrests.
"Used to we had to have a dollar amount where we would have to prove that the immigrant paid that person or that person received money from somebody else," Sheriff Dodson said. "Well, under the new law if you've got one or two or fifteen in your car then you can be charged. And if you have 8 or 9 in your car, we're charging you with 9 felony counts of smuggling. We're up to some 300 some odd felony charges when we only filed like 59 the year before. It's overwhelmed our jail; it's overwhelmed our court system. We understand that some of the smugglers won't even see a trial date for five years. In the meantime, we've already caught several of them twice."
Sheriff Dodson also estimated that they are probably only catching about twenty percent of the migrants that are passing through Brewster county.
"The governments taxed on it, the state, our governor, it's taxed the state on border security our locals are now being taxed so it seems like a lot of effort is going into this so the consequences down the road are going to be very significant," Sheriff Dodson said. "People were smuggling when my grandmother lived on the river and I believe they'll smuggle when were gone."
Most migrants traveling are also coming to places like here in midland and Odessa with some being bussed to Washington.