On the Border, Police Chase Smugglers. The Migrant Body Count Is Getting Higher.

Emergency workers tended to a person injured in the car crash on the outskirts of the town of Robstown, Tex., on Wednesday.CreditRachel Denny/Corpus Christi Caller-Times, via Associated Press

Emergency workers tended to a person injured in the car crash on the outskirts of the town of Robstown, Tex., on Wednesday.CreditCreditRachel Denny/Corpus Christi Caller-Times, via Associated Press
By Manny Fernandez

• June 5, 2019

HOUSTON — A vehicle packed with undocumented migrants crashed in rural South Texas after it was chased by police, veering into a ditch in rainy weather and killing six people who were found Wednesday morning — the latest in a series of deadly crashes involving immigrants near the border.

The crash occurred on the outskirts of the town of Robstown, about 20 miles west of Corpus Christi.

The S.U.V. was packed with more than a dozen migrants and had been speeding when a Robstown police officer tried to pull it over on Tuesday evening, the authorities said. The driver sped away in the rain, and the police ended the chase when the officer lost the vehicle in a brush-covered area.

At some point after the chase, the driver of the S.U.V. appeared to have lost control and crashed into a drainage ditch next to a dirt road in a field. Authorities discovered the wreckage at the bottom of the 15-foot-deep ditch hours later.

Six men were found dead inside the vehicle. Six other men were outside the vehicle, and another man was found later nearby. All seven of the injured migrants were transported to local hospitals, and the authorities on Wednesday were still searching for the driver, who appeared to have escaped, officials said.

“In my 13 years, it’s one of those that’s up there — it was a gruesome scene,” Roland Padilla, the Robstown emergency medical services chief, told reporters on Wednesday.

All of the migrants in the S.U.V. were from either Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or Mexico. They were all men in their late teens and early 20s, officials said.

The death toll from vehicle chases or single-car accidents involving smuggled migrants has steadily risen in recent years. In South Texas alone, more than 40 undocumented men, women and children have been killed since 2012.

Smugglers routinely transport migrants on the roads and highways in Texas border cities, often picking them up from stash houses, dropping them off near Border Patrol checkpoints, guiding them on foot through the brush and then later picking them up again just north of the checkpoints. The migrants themselves are rarely behind the wheel.

The drivers are usually smugglers who are paid to escort the migrants. Many of these drivers refuse to pull over if the authorities become suspicious of the vehicles, and they lead the Border Patrol, police officers and sheriff’s deputies on dangerous, high-speed chases, often in rural areas.

“This is not an uncommon event,” J.C. Hooper, the sheriff of Nueces County, which includes Robstown, told reporters Wednesday.

A vehicle was moved by law enforcement officers as they investigated the fatal wreck.CreditCourtney Sacco/Corpus Christi Caller-Times, via Associated Press
Image
A vehicle was moved by law enforcement officers as they investigated the fatal wreck.CreditCourtney Sacco/Corpus Christi Caller-Times, via Associated Press
In April 2012, Border Patrol agents attempted to pull over a minivan near McAllen, Tex. The teenage driver stopped on the side of the road but then sped away, crashed and rolled over. Nine of the 16 migrants inside the minivan were killed.

Months later, in July 2012, a Ford pickup crammed with more than 20 undocumented adults and children veered off a highway near the South Texas town of Goliad and struck two trees, killing 15 migrants. The youngest fatality was a girl about 8 years old.

In 2015, six people were killed near Edna, Tex., after the driver of an S.U.V. filled with migrants fled from officers and lost control. The vehicle, which flipped over repeatedly and ejected several passengers, had been carrying undocumented adults from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

And last June, five migrants in an S.U.V. were killed after the vehicle crashed on a highway outside the town of Big Wells, Tex., while being pursued by sheriff’s deputies and Border Patrol agents.

Law enforcement agencies on the border have been criticized for being too aggressive during vehicle chases. In 2012, a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter joined the pursuit of a speeding truck near the border, and an officer inside the helicopter opened fire with a high-powered rifle in an attempt to shoot one of the truck’s tires. The officer ended up shooting and killing two Guatemalan migrants hiding in the bed of the truck.

The sheriff of Brooks County, a rural South Texas county that is home to a busy Border Patrol checkpoint north of McAllen, said there were three to four smuggling-related vehicle chases a week in his county.

“It’s pretty constant,” Sheriff Benny Martinez said. He defended his deputies’ handling of the pursuits and the overall law enforcement response to the problem on the border.

“This is not really a regular stop at all, not when you have the criminal element behind that wheel,” Sheriff Martinez said. “Their main objective is to either hit a fence-line or find a way to get out so they themselves can escape, the driver. It’s dangerous for everyone, especially when they’re busting through intersections. It’s one of those Catch-22s. If we don’t do it, shame on us. If we do it, shame on us.”

On Wednesday, Robstown police officials said the S.U.V. crash was not a direct result of the police pursuit.

Sheriff Hooper said that at about 4 a.m. Wednesday, a resident reported that a man who appeared to have been injured had knocked at the resident’s door. The man was never found, but shortly after, the authorities were called again to the area when two juvenile men who appeared to be wounded were spotted nearby. Those two men were apprehended.

It wasn’t until shortly after 7 a.m. that the crash scene was finally located, the sheriff said.

A version of this article appears in print on June 5, 2019, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Migrants Die After Chase Near Border Ends in Crash. Order
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Get 'em back on the south side of the border...they have hospitals there, too.

Sorry, just don't give a damn about the general welfare of an invading army.

 

Well , that's the chance you take when you won't follow the law . If mexico would have been enforcing their laws , they might have died closer to home . It's really sad , but I just can't get choked up about these things . Choices ,,, some people aren't very good at choosing them .

 

Cougar or Illegal all the same.

They both come to take from me and leave death, garbage, babies and destruction behind.

 

It's a not a nice way to die; however, they were breaking the law. The injured should be transferred back to Mexico immediately for care. We need much, much harsher treatment for these folks who enter illegally, maybe chain gangs, something so harsh that they do not try it.

 

Another reason for the boarder wall.

 

Can't help them, can shoot them.

 

My take is all together different. These were people, just looking for a better life and we all seem to think this was a damned bit different than our ancestors leaving England and taking this place away from the natives? Yes, illegal immigration is a financial burden, yes there will be outlaws and such, sort of like Butch and Sundance down in Argentina, I would think? Far as I am concerned, I would ally myself with these folks against the real trouble, our so called government. This system has reached critical mass with the present population density and all the deals made with other countries to try and preserve a profit for mega-corporations. Simple fact is that we are in for some bad times soon, the right to freely swing one's arms is only as real as the space to swing them without impacting others. Grow more turf or cull the herd.

 

Sounds honorable, problem is they bring all the bad and have nothing to support themselves.
I wonder how you'd feel if you had to pick up after them, dung and trash and for sure we now see a disease we thought was long gone in the worst of all places, our elementary schools.

Of course these "All of the migrants in the S.U.V. were from either Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or Mexico. They were all men in their late teens and early 20s, officials said." are just here to take care of us!

 

Anyway, I am not responsible for what happened in the past but I am responsible in seeing my country stays strong and is not over run by Cougars or Illegal Aliens from any place.

 

Then with all of the free handouts the dems give away ,and illegals receive as well , without putting a dime into anything , and illegal voting , we end up with uninformed voters dictating our existence . Nope , I'm not going for it . Stay home till we get our stuff straightened out . Then come in the right way . Either way , it's still the law ,

 

Horrible analogy......this country is nothing like it was then. In population or anything else. And those early immigrants made this country better....far better. Comparing current US citizens to the 'poor' native Indians is also BS. They had no country, no laws and nothing to show for their millennium(s) of inhabiting this continent except for wandering nomadic tribes with no common culture. In our 300+ years here, the (mostly Northern European) settlers have built the finest country and civilization known to this planer. Ever.
We need to seal our borders tight and seek out and deport every illegal currently here. And quickly. We are losing this country.

I'm guessing you do not live anywhere near the border?

 

It is 75 miles to the border from my house .
Illegals are common here, they have plenty of support besides the state. they always have, as far back as I can remember .(1950s)
The allure of free living and welfare is the most serous mistake the democrats have fostered world wide . Europe is going to pot wit their liberal agenda and it's backfiring is to be expected, but do they learn? NO.
Venezuela is getting what they hope for, a reduced population both by starvation and evacuation. Having denied the help they have been offered it proves to me they intend this maneuver till the population is significantly reduced .till then we are going to see more and more immigration from the south and others slipping in from the far east.

 

Nailed it!
Up until around the 90's the flow of illegals wasn't near as bad, nor the flow of drugs! And yes, they had lots of help and support from their "Country men" already here!
And we know the problem with all that now, It's NOT Mexicans, it's the others coming here and them pushing out the Mexicans who were here first! Every time the Democrats hold any sort of power, they take control and use it to build their voter base, largely by passing out free stuff! We all know how that's going to work once the dems loose their power again, all those who got free shit will demand more free shit, and they wont get it, so they change their vote!

 

Still think it's political crap. I remember being in Miami and hearing all the good folks there wanting to get rid of all the Cubans, same shit. Problem was that you could take every man, woman, and child in Cuba and distribute them evenly in say ,North Dakota ,and none of them could land a pistol round in their Cuban neighbor's back yard; do the geometry. If we can spend billions of dollars just to feed the war machine and keep the economy moving, why can't we find something more serious that a bunch of bean-pickers sneaking across a political demarcation line to get riled up about. Maybe it's a problem, but I think it's just slight of hand to keep us from seeing where the rabbit really come from. School shootings, Muslim invasions , Illegal bean-pickers, war on drugs, , OK City, 9/11, Waco, all magic works the same. Most our major industry has moved South to take advantage of cheap labor and lessened regulations, why should I have to pay some white guy a hundred bucks for mowing my lawn, same lawn that I used to charge $3.00 to mow when I was a boy, when I can get a perfectly good Mexican to cut it for $25.00?

 

Ah yes, to heck with the damage just as long as it saves a buck.

 

I realize that the US had no aspirations of world domination but looking back it sure would have made a big difference.
It is strange that the world did not look at our success and implement that value, but dictators cannot release their grip .
We will have continues flood of refugees for 2 reasons .
1. Democrats providing free stuff .the lure .
2. Countries abusing their people.
Without requiring incomers to assimilate we create a new problem and adopting their standards is not a fix seeing their own countries failed because of them.
Liberals are too stupid to see this. sorry it's true.

 

How you figure all that?
Indians paid no taxes
Land was free
Medicine was free
Women worked
Men hunted and fished all day and played games
Had more than 1 wife in some cases...( Don't know if that's good or bad )
White man screwed all that up !

 

@Seacowboys and @Gator 45/70 thanks for taking the hits on this one gentlemen you are not going to change their minds.

On the one hand we have cheap labor and cheap food coming across the border, on the other hand we have money going back over the boarder and many of them do pay taxes ... just under a the same SSn that is used over and over until it's shut down.

We are due for an economic field leveling in the USA. Hold on to your preps @Motomom34 and I have been discussing the timing (like civilized adults) she is say 5 quarters appx, I believe it will be sooner.

And all this will be moot as we scramble to recover ... I think SeaCowboys is right... it's all smoke and mirrors for other issues in play