I Toured the Texas-Mexico Border. Here Are 8 Things I Learned.

LAREDO, Texas—Guarding this sector of the southern border involves a set of challenges that is quite different than nearby stations in the Lone Star State.

I learned this during a tour of the border last week that included this city of about 250,000 across from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just a few hours away across the Rio Grande Valley station.

I traveled along the 171-mile stretch of border as a reporter for The Daily Signal, and here’s some of what I learned firsthand from Border Patrol agents who guard it.

1. Cartel Control

The violent Cartel del Noreste controls and profits from illegal immigration across the southern border.

“The Laredo sector is unique compared to our bordering neighbors to the left and to the right of us, up river and down river, in that we sit right across the border from the headquarters of the Cartel del Noreste, formerly known [as] the Zetas Cartel,” Joel Martinez, deputy chief of the Border Patrol for the Laredo sector, told me during an interview.

“They are the main reason we are not getting the massive humanity coming at us,” Martinez said of the drug cartel, “because they control that part of the border so violently.”

Martinez continued:

"So last month they discovered through interviews with aliens that a lot of people were being held against their will until they could pay the Zetas, or the Cartel del Noreste. That being said, our agents were actually able to identify the smugglers and the keepers of these houses. And working with FBI and other federal partners, and also our Mexican partners, we were able to identify exactly where these stash houses were, and who these smugglers were.

"And keep in mind, they’re pretty ruthless. If you don’t pay, they start punishing these people severely until the families pay. So we just got a conviction on two of them on our side, on the American side; when they did come across, we were able to identify them."

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