Stretches of Border See ‘Hours to Days’ Response Time from Agents, Says Hurd

U.S. House Rep. Will Hurd of Texas brought attention to a shocking reality along the U.S.-Mexico border: it sometimes takes hours to days before U.S. law enforcement can respond to certain stretches of remote regions of the border.

The statements were made by Rep. Hurd on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria. He stated, “In certain places on the border … and Border Patrol, when their response time to a problem at the border is measured in hours to days, then a wall isn’t a physical barrier ….’ The congressman discussed the remoteness of much of the roughly 800 miles of border in his 23rd Congressional District.

Rep. Hurd’s district stretches along the border from near Eagle Pass, Texas, in the Del Rio Sector through El Paso, Texas, encompassing a portion of the El Paso Sector. His district faces multiple Mexican transnational criminal organizations (cartels) ranging from Los Zetas in the east to La Linea or the Juarez Cartel in the west. Factions of the Sinaloa Federation operate in between.

Border Patrol Agent Lee Smith, speaking to Breitbart Texas in his role as president of Local 2509 of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), discussed working in the remote Big Bend region Rep. Hurd spoke of. Agent Smith stated, “It sometimes does take us hours upon hours to reach certain regions in our sector. Rep. Hurd represents 800 miles of the border. My sector, Big Bend, contains roughly 500 of those 800 miles.”

The Big Bend Sector is the least secured section of U.S.-Mexico border. One agent in the region told Breitbart Texas that there are places that do not have sensors or cameras that agents are unable to patrol for days at a time, thus showing that the U.S. government has no knowledge as to what may occur in those areas.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.