Charges against eleven migrants arrested under Governor Abbott's Operation Lone Star have been dropped.
Under the governor's border initiative, migrants are arrested for trespassing.
Val Verde County Attorney David Martinez says the migrants were apprehended in his jurisdiction. He says their defense council invited him to visit with the migrants, who were being held in the Briscoe prison unit in Dilley. The DPS also joined the online meeting.
He says the defendant said "from the point they were apprehended, they were made to walk 20 to 30 minutes to an area. They had been zip-tied in pairs. They were walking in pairs. They were made to jump over a fence that he described to be three meters high so it was not easy to do but they did. Apparently, the officers had the K-9 with them, They could not throw the dog over the fence so they cut a hole in the fence to pass the dog through."
He says the migrant testified that the arresting agency had, this whole time, been in contact with the agency that was going to pick up and transport the immigrants. He says the man added once they cleared the fence they were told they were in the wrong area and had to go back over the fence. That's when they were arrested for criminal trespass.
He says the problem he had with the case is; "all I had in the case file was the probable cause affidavit and the arrest report from the DPS troopers who made the arrest. However, they were not the agency that discovered the immigrants on this property. At the end of the day, I was left with some holes I could not fill."
He said he couldn't elicit testimony from the DPS troopers because they didn't make the discovery of the individuals on the private property: "Without a supplemental report from what I believed to have been Border Patrol Agents, I didn't have all the evidence I needed to place them on specific private property because those reports were missing."
He said it was futile for him to continue: "In any case where I can't make and meet the elements with sufficient credible evidence, I'm not going to proceed."
Martinez has dismissed 123 of 231 cases. He says some elements of Operation Lone Star, which he first heard of last Spring, were put together hastily. He says there was a hearing on August 24th at the state House. He says the purpose of the hearing was to determine if money should be allocated for the operation. He says DPS chief Col. Steven McCraw testified that they aren't looking for asylum seekers. They were looking for people trying to escape Border Patrol and not hide from them.
"In those instances where I could ascertain that the person didn't appear to be skirting law enforcement, but was seeking out law enforcement to turn themselves in, according to Col McGraw's testimony, that's not the individual we were targeting."
He says the vast majority of the cases dismissed or rejected have been those that crossed the river and happened to cross someone's property. "Most immigrants don't know the difference between a DPS uniform, a National Guard uniform, or a Border Patrol Uniform. They see a uniform and think that's where I need to go. It seems those weren't the real intended target of Operation Lone Star. Those people in a lot of these cases are from Venezuela or Cuba, two nations who governments we know to be very oppressive, and it seems there's a real chance they had a credible asylum claim."
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