Searching for migrants takes deputy into desolate, dangerous ranchlands of South Texas

BROOKS COUNTY, Texas (Border Report) — Brooks County Sheriff’s Deputy Don White was trudging through a thicket of thorny weeds and downed branches looking for migrants in these remote ranchlands on Monday when he got a call that a body had been found on the other side of the county.

It had already taken White several minutes to get into this particular spot, and considerable time driving to the area in his old, beat up Jeep, so he radioed back that he couldn’t make it to the body and to send it to the morgue.

That was the second body to be found in this South Texas county in two days and the 17th deceased migrant found here, so far this year.

White, 71, has run the Wildlands Search and Recovery Program here for nearly a decade. He’s the search and recovery deputy and he knows these lands well and he knows how deadly they can be.

In 2021, there were 121 migrant deaths in Brooks County.

The migrants are trying to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint in the nearby town of Falfurrias, so they are dropped off south of the checkpoint and forced to walk for days.

“My job is to find the border crossers that have gotten lost and some that have died from the heat and recover their bodies and return them to their families,” White said as he took Border Report on a daylong ride along through desolate terrain.

Occasionally, he finds someone alive — the lucky ones.

“That’s why I don’t wear green. I wear tan so they can see me. They usually wave me down. If they do that then that means they really need help,” he said.

He even administers IV fluid and often hauls them out of the brush alone and then rushes them for medical help.

“I’ve got an IV in there at 60 degrees. If I need to IV somebody who is really heat-stressed then that’s about 1 liter to about 6 liters of their’s so it will bring their temperature down in a controlled manner and not put them into shock,” White said.

After trekking through a particularly difficult patch of brush, White sat on his haunches breathing hard.

“I rest a lot,” said the semiconductor retiree.

His program is part of Texas’ Operation Lone Star, and it’s often lonely and depressing work.

On Monday, he was sweaty and sunburnt and he still had thistles and thorns stuck in his arms and was tired and aching from the day before.

On Sunday, he found the body of a migrant pinned in a tree in a bad state of decomposition.

He had to call in additional law enforcement to help him haul the heavy body.

The family wants to come identify the body, but White is discouraging them from doing so.

“You don’t want to have the last way you remember your loved one like that,” he says.

White goes out in his old, bug-stained Jeep just about every day. He drives down dirt trails and through forgotten ranchlands searching for migrants who have been lost or left behind by their guides, or coyotes.

His only companion is his dog Socks, a stray that he also found abandoned out here about a year and a half ago.

He carries weapons and recently fired in the direction of a wild hog that was charging him after Socks disrupted her piglets.

On Monday, he began his day by trying to locate the spot where a man from Mexico had been abandoned by his coyote when he couldn’t keep up with his group of migrants. Once he found it, he hammered in a wooden white cross with the name “Jose Manuel.”

Then he texted a photo of the cross to Manuel’s wife in Mexico City who responded with gratitude in Spanish.

“I tell people that it’s always best to turn themselves in, call 911, get medical help. Yes they’ll get deported, but they know what the conditions are like. They know what Brooks is about,” he said.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.