Val Verde County is like a lot of South Texas counties: sparsely populated, rugged, dry, and vast. It’s also ground zero for the border crisis.
What we learned on a recent trip — talking with the sheriff, talking with Border Patrol officers and veterans, and most of all talking to the men and women who have made their lives in this part of Texas — was shocking.
While the humanitarian tragedy grips the headlines, the unprecedented level of dangerous drugs flooding the border threatens to do considerable damage. The threat is existential.