(The Center Square) – A small border community in Brackettville, Texas, that’s been under siege for three years by cartel operatives and human smugglers has been receiving help nearly every day for 30 months from sheriff’s deputies traveling roughly 400 miles from Galveston County. They’ve been described as the modern-day cavalry – following in the footsteps of a previous cavalry first stationed there over 150 years ago.
Pioneers who settled in the west Texas wilderness to farm and raise livestock stuck it out for generations, struggling with the natural elements, including droughts, as well as defending themselves and their livestock from Mexican bandits and Indian raids. By 1872, members of the U.S. Army’s then newly formed Seminole-Negro Indian Scout Detachment established a permanent settlement two miles south of Fort Clark in Brackettville. Their exploits in the Lower Pecos and Big Bend regions became legendary, with three scouts receiving the Medal of Honor. The Scouts were described as “the very first border patrol to operate in the Big Bend region,” according to the U.S. Army Historical Foundation.
In 1867, two newly formed units of all Black men, the 9th and 10th Cavalries, rode west to carry out “some of the worst and most dangerous missions on the frontier.” Referred to as Buffalo Soldiers, “some sources say the Indians nicknamed the troopers ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ because of their buffalo skin coats or their dark skin and curly hair. Others say the Indians thought the black men were strong and fought courageously, like buffalo,” the Buffalo Soldier Museum in Houston explains.
Tracks for the railroad being built at the time connecting the eastern U.S. to western territories wouldn’t have been laid without the Scouts or Buffalo Soldiers, historians argue. They guarded mail routes, escorted wagon trains, and protected Texans from outlaws, Mexican revolutionaries, Comanche and other Indian tribes, the foundation and museum explain. While they were separate groups, they both explored thousands of miles of wilderness in the West, helping to map the Southwest. They fought, bled and died as American war heroes despite discrimination they faced for decades.
In the fall of 1942, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 9th Calvary moved into Fort Clark’s Cavalry barracks in Brackettville. For the remainder of World War II, the barracks were occupied by 182 Black American-enlisted women of the Woman’s Army Corps Detachment of the 1855th Service Unit.
Decades later, in August 2021, Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset began working with Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star. He became the first and only Texas sheriff to regularly deploy deputies to Kinney County – and he’s done so for 30 consecutive months. The deputies, men and women of all backgrounds, volunteered to help defend Brackettville. More than 65 deputies signed up for more than 100 two-week tours since August 2021.
The Center Square met with two who’ve volunteered and served in multiple tours at the border: deputies Andre Savage and Sharone Lewis. Savage has been on four missions, Lewis seven. When asked why they came so many times, they said, “The people, the atmosphere.”
“It’s a different kind of policing for a different reason, different outlook from where we’re at” in Galveston County, Savage said. It’s different in terms of interdiction, looking for human smugglers, Lewis said. “Some days you’ll catch scouts. Some days you’ll catch smugglers. It just all depends.”
When asked how many scouts they’ve caught, Lewis said, “Too many to count.” Scouts work with coyotes to identify where people can be moved to avoid detection. They identify where law enforcement officers are positioned, relay their location and movements to other scouts, in order for smugglers to avoid getting caught, officials have explained to The Center Square.
Savage said they catch a lot of scouts because “generally before they start with smuggling, they send a scout to see where everybody’s positioned and if it’s clear to come through.”
The scouts they’re catching are both Americans and non-Americans, they said.
“It’s a good mix. Sometimes they are undocumented aliens,” Lewis said. “They come down here looking for the same thing, make a quick check, go back home, and sometimes they are Americans.”
The most shocking thing they said they’ve seen, Savage said, is “the age of the people that are smuggling.” They include “teenagers, elderly couples. There’s a wide array, but primarily what we’ve seen is younger. A lot of just younger people in general.”
Officials have explained to The Center Square that teenagers and younger adults are responding to social media advertisements promising to make several thousand dollars per carload to transport people north from the border after they’ve illegally entered. The Texas legislature recently passed a new bill increasing penalties for human smuggling to 10 years, which goes into effect Feb. 6, 2024. When Abbott signed it into law, he said human smuggling in Texas “has gotten out of control.” In 2017, there were 370 human smuggling arrests in Texas. In 2023, there were 7,700, a more than 2,000% increase.
Savage said cartel operatives are using Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok to recruit and target a younger crowd, even recruiting teenagers at the mall.
After they catch alleged smugglers and those they’re transporting, Lewis said, “I asked the aliens where they’re going. Most of the time, it’s either Dallas, San Antonio, or Los Angeles.”
The initial primary destination is San Antonio, they said, because it’s only a two-hour drive from Brackettville.
They’re grateful to be a part of OLS, they said, and for sheriffs Trochesset and Coe, who “gave us the opportunity and we jumped.”
