RESTORING ORDER AT THE BORDER

Armed With Millions In State Cash, Police Slow
River-Crossing Thieves, But For How Long?

DEL RIO, Texas -- From Tommy Vick's back yard, the Rio Grande is a
picture postcard of serenity as it cuts through steep limestone
bluffs, sunlight catching on dark water. Until recently, it was more a
battleground.

For more years than anyone remembers, thieves regularly crossed from
neighboring Mexico at will, ransacking Mr. Vick's Vega Verde Estates
neighborhood, stealing whatever couldn't be tied down and darting back
across the river before police could respond. Last November, thieves
even made off with Mr. Vick's lawn tractor.

"They tied it to a homemade raft and floated it across on inner
tubes," he said. "A tractor! That was nearly the last straw."

But officials say such crime in Texas' border counties is down
dramatically this year because of initiatives that increased police
presence fivefold in some areas. The lesson, they say, is simple.

"It shows we can take back control of the border if we can saturate
the area with law enforcement officers and create high visibility,"
said Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan.

"But for it to work, it's going to have to be permanent. We have to
take on the whole border."

Since December, when Gov. Rick Perry provided $10 million in state and
federal grants to the 16 border sheriffs for a border security effort
called Operation Linebacker, Sheriff Jernigan was able to increase
patrols through overtime pay and newly hired deputies. Crime in the
Vega Verde area began to tumble.

Then with an additional $1.2 million in state funds, "Operation Del
Rio" flooded Val Verde County and four neighboring counties with extra
law enforcement officers for three weeks last month. The sheriff says
crime came to a virtual standstill.

Operation Del Rio established the manpower equivalent of 1,000
officers in the five-county region, according to Jack Colley, chief of
the Governor's Division of Emergency Management. For Sheriff Jernigan,
that meant he could place 10 deputies on duty per shift, a fivefold
increase.

"The Vega was eating us alive. Thieves hit there and were home
enjoying a drink by the time we could respond," he said. "The
additional money means we can patrol there every day. We also put up
security cameras and now the Border Patrol has begun making more
frequent patrols."

Sheriff Jernigan's office has provided no specific figures, but
officials say major felonies -- homicides, burglaries and thefts --
were down in Val Verde County by three-quarters during Operation Del
Rio. Neighboring Maverick County reported a one-quarter drop in crime.
The other three counties -- Dimmit, Zavala and Kinney -- experienced
significant reductions, too, officials said.

Heightened law enforcement has paid off for Mr. Vick and his
neighbors. Burglaries have virtually dried up. The sheriff's office
had received 40 phone calls a day to report a crime. Now it's four.

Mr. Vick, a 15-year resident of the neighborhood, said the almost
constant assault by thieves took its toll on the 60 households along
this five-mile curve of the Rio Grande.

"They take TVs, water pumps, computers, radios, electrical equipment
and tools, anything they can carry," said Mr. Vick. He estimates
burglaries have cost him $20,000. "I saw a couple of guys take an
above-ground fiberglass pool from a neighbor's house and float it
across to Mexico."

Some owners have abandoned their homes as a lost cause. Most homes
show signs of the assault -- repaired doors and windows, heavy locks,
security lights and a string of trailers and outbuildings damaged by
burglars in search of loot.

Mr. Vick said even that didn't help one night a few years ago. His
wife woke him to say someone was in the house. They had taken pictures
off the wall and stacked some electronic goods on the porch. By the
time he arose and got his rifle, the thieves had run into the river.

The area has also seen more than its share of drug traffic. In January
2003, a gunbattle raged along this portion of the river between Border
Patrol agents and suspected drug smugglers caught running marijuana.
An estimated 500 rounds were fired.

No one was injured as agents took two Mexican citizens into custody
and seized about 1,000 pounds of marijuana.

At times, the violence has spilled over from the U.S. side. In 1999,
Vega neighborhood resident Patrick Bordelon was arrested and later
convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of a Mexican teenager
he caught on his property.

A year earlier, Mr. Bordelon had been convicted of aggravated assault
in the shooting of another Mexican man who was walking near his home.

"The Vega was just out of control. There were frequent shootings and
burglaries every night and not much we were equipped to stop it," said
David Wharton, a former Customs inspector now working temporarily as a
deputy for Operation Linebacker. "Dopers were starting to use the
abandoned houses as stash houses."

Last summer, the frustration got to be too much for law
enforcement.

On Aug. 8, 2005, veteran sheriff's investigator Lt. Larry Pope
responded to a burglary call in the Vega neighborhood about four
houses down from Mr. Vick. When he got there, property owners were in
the back, pointing to the Mexican riverbank where men were unloading
stolen goods from a homemade raft.

Lt. Pope called the Border Patrol and was told it would be awhile
before they could put a boat on the river. A call to Mexican officials
was even less helpful.

In his report, Lt. Pope wrote that he said, "If I had a boat, I could
get those things myself." A neighbor offered up his fishing boat.

"Nobody wanted to create an international incident, but the stuff was
just right there, 30 or 40 yards away," Sheriff Jernigan said. "So
Larry took off his badge and gun and took the boat across to pick up
the goods. It took several trips -- one thing they stole was an air
conditioner. But he got it all back.

"Texas law says that whenever a law enforcement officer finds stolen
property, he's supposed to seize it so it can be returned to its
lawful owner," he said. "And that's exactly what Larry did."

The thieves, having abandoned the stolen goods, offered no
resistance.

On his return, Lt. Pope called U.S. Customs to see whether agents
wanted to drive upriver to check the goods brought in from Mexico.
They declined, allowing him to make his declaration by phone.

As pleased as Sheriff Jernigan is with the successes of recent border
security operations, his big concern is what happens next. Is the
government's interest in the border steady, or will it fade with the
next new crisis?

"To sustain the successes we've had recently, we need to have this
kind of response to border crime on a more permanent basis," he said.
"As a society, we have to recognize that we can't ignore the border
ever again."

During a recent visit to Del Rio to check the results of his border
security operations, Mr. Perry promised more such blitz attacks on
border crime.

"The international drug cartels and human-smuggling rings will not
know when or where these operations will occur ... or how long they
will last," Mr. Perry said during a recent visit. "Texas is not
waiting for Washington to act. We will continue to do all we can to
make our border stronger and our nation safer."

Mr. Vick has heard reassuring words before. He fears, however, that
recent successes are only temporary relief.

"If we can get the government to know what we're putting up with down
here, they'll have to do something. But frankly, as a taxpayer, I'm
embarrassed," he said.

Mr. Vick stands in his back yard, looking out onto the river's quiet
beauty. "It's been a hard time and there's times I just got sick of
it," he said. "We've thought about leaving but, really, I just
couldn't do that. I'd hate to say I let them run me off."