Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
"We're losing our country...most people don't know and don't care" - Dr. Michael Vickers, south Texas vet, talking with us from his Veterinarian Hospital in Falfurrias, 70 miles from the Rio Grande Valley border. Vickers tells the story of Brooks County, known as 'death valley' for the number of people and traffickers (human and drugs) attempting to bypass the border checkpoint to enter illegally into the U.S.
The quasi-legal aliens (from as many as 70 countries) surrender by the thousands to the Border Patrol when they cross the Rio Grande into the U.S. In April 2019 over 240,000 such individuals gave themselves up in the knowledge they would be released within a couple of weeks, and sent to some village, town or city in the U.S. -- with orders to appear for an immigration hearing (immigration judges typically can handle only about 100 cases a year), some time in the future. Nine-hundred thousand cases are pending.
It takes another level of organized crime (Los Zetas, M-13, etc.) to smuggle people past the two closest Border Patrol checkpoints. It's either a walk for 70 or so miles through the arid and treacherous ranch land, or arrange to be dropped off, then picked up in the "pickup zone" for a ride to the city (San Antonio, or Houston) and parts north.
In the 30 years Dr. Vickers has been a rancher and chief veterinarian for some 16 south Texas counties, he's always seen the Border Patrol underfunded and ill equipped, but since the Clinton administration, illegal migration began to get noticeably worse: a shift in illegals from Mexico to those from Central America, Pakistan, China, Somalia. The term is OTM's: other than Mexican. Vickers formed the Texas Border Volunteers in 2006.
Note especially: the most current and reliable reporting on the border story is the Center for Immigration Studies.
"We're losing our country...most people don't know and don't care" - Dr. Michael Vickers, south Texas vet, talking with us from his Veterinarian Hospital in Falfurrias, 70 miles from the Rio Grande Valley border. Vickers tells the story of Brooks County, known as 'death valley' for the number of people and traffickers (human and drugs) attempting to bypass the border checkpoint to enter illegally into the U.S.
The quasi-legal aliens (from as many as 70 countries) surrender by the thousands to the Border Patrol when they cross the Rio Grande into the U.S. In April 2019 over 240,000 such individuals gave themselves up in the knowledge they would be released within a couple of weeks, and sent to some village, town or city in the U.S. -- with orders to appear for an immigration hearing (immigration judges typically can handle only about 100 cases a year), some time in the future. Nine-hundred thousand cases are pending.
It takes another level of organized crime (Los Zetas, M-13, etc.) to smuggle people past the two closest Border Patrol checkpoints. It's either a walk for 70 or so miles through the arid and treacherous ranch land, or arrange to be dropped off, then picked up in the "pickup zone" for a ride to the city (San Antonio, or Houston) and parts north.
In the 30 years Dr. Vickers has been a rancher and chief veterinarian for some 16 south Texas counties, he's always seen the Border Patrol underfunded and ill equipped, but since the Clinton administration, illegal migration began to get noticeably worse: a shift in illegals from Mexico to those from Central America, Pakistan, China, Somalia. The term is OTM's: other than Mexican. Vickers formed the Texas Border Volunteers in 2006.
Note especially: the most current and reliable reporting on the border story is the Center for Immigration Studies.
