On April 21, 1836, defenders of Texas liberty won the Battle of San Jacinto in 18 minutes, defeating the Mexican Army, creating the Texas Republic, and making possible what would become the western half of the United States.
Among them was Jesse Lindsey McCrocklan following the orders of General Sam Houston, who served as his best man in his wedding.
The Battle of San Jacinto was “one of the most decisive and consequential battles in the history of the United States and indeed, the Western world,” the San Jacinto Museum and Battlefield Association says. Today, Republican governors supporting Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star, hail from former territories that became states benefiting from Texas independence, The Center Square reported.
As the battle between Abbott and President Joe Biden continued over state sovereignty and Texas’ constitutional right to defend its border, the leaders and residents of 25 states came to Texas’ aid supporting OLS, as others did from 22 states who fought and died at the Alamo. It was their last stand for freedom. Those at San Jacinto avenged their sacrifice.
Now, McCrocklan’s ancestor, Prosser Martin Wall, who goes by Martin, has been fighting a similar battle for survival, committed to defending Texas. Living in his ancestral home roughly one mile from the Mexican border in Maverick County, he found himself forced to defend his family from illegal border crossers invading his property, destroying his livelihood and nearly ruining him as a result of Biden administration policies.
“For 17 months in a row, the CBP Del Rio Sector was the number one with gotaways in the nation. Everything is divided into one square mile. This square mile right over this house was the number one for 17 months – the most traffic in the entire country came through my property,” he told The Center Square in an exclusive interview during a tour of his property. Roughly 300 a day trespassed onto his property, he said.
Open fields are now bare that used to be full of roughly 2,000 cattle and planted crops.
“We worked every day fixing everything that was torn down from the night before,” he said, referring to miles of fencing that used to be used to keep in livestock. The foot traffic and crime “literally shut us down.” He hasn’t been able to run cattle in four years.
“I can’t utilize this property at all. I cannot use my own property that I have a bank note on. It’s rendered useless,” he said.
As the border crisis worsened, Republican members of Congress continued to hold news conferences blaming the Biden administration while still funding the border crisis and sending billions of dollars overseas to Ukraine and other countries.
“Democrats and Republicans and everyone in Congress is responsible for what’s happening. We feel abandoned by our own government. All they do is have meetings, photo-ops, press conferences and nothing changes,” he said.
With no federal or local assistance, the calvary came – OLS officers: Texas National Guard, which erected concertina wire barriers, DPS troopers and more recently, OLS horse patrol.
The Wall property is split by railroad tracks and was used as a staging ground for illegal border crossers to jump on the train to avoid getting caught. As a result, the Walls would find a lot of injured foreign nationals on their property. Two days after Thanksgiving, Wall’s wife found a 27-year-old girl in her truck with blood all over it. She’d crawled across the street after a train had cut off her foot.
Men came to their front porch in the middle of the night before the barriers were erected, he said. “Illegal aliens destroyed miles of fence over 100 times. They broke windows, picked up rocks and bust the windows of my truck, one stole one of my vehicles with my wallet, pistol, computer, briefcase, and everything in it. The thief was apprehended but got released.”
Another time, he found two men in his kitchen while his 18-year-old-daughter was in her room. He’s found people tied with their hands behind their back. He’s torn down rape trees, where victims’ underwear is left. He’s found little boys who’d been raped, pulled 13 children out of a grain car, found stranded toddlers in his fields, found many adults who’d been sexually assaulted, beaten and near death.
“The City of Eagle Pass doesn’t have the manpower,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Greg Abbott, our town would be overrun. When you get 15,000 people under the bridge, our population is 24,000, we couldn’t have the structure. When this first started, you couldn’t get a loaf of bread, a bag of chips, bottles of water, it was gone. Literally everything.
“I don’t think people realize how much Abbott has helped us. You only have so many people in Maverick County Sheriff’s Office, Eagle Pass Police Department,” he said.
“No one was prepared for this. The chaos we’ve experienced in last four years we’ve seen nothing like it in the last four generations of families who’ve lived here.”
“Every book has a bad chapter. If I could pick anywhere in the world to live, I’d live in the United States. It’s the greatest country in the world. Of any state I’d live in Texas because we’re just better than everybody else. And anywhere in Texas, I’d live right here on this river. This is a beautiful place. I have a lot of passion for this place. I love this place. I would never leave this place.”
The next chapter will be better, he said, because Eagle Pass residents, as did the majority of Texas border counties, and Americans, voted for Donald Trump.
“Thank God for Donald Trump and Greg Abbott,” Wall said. “Otherwise, we would have lost everything. This is my home. I’m not going to let anyone come and take it.”
