Texas Agency’s Web Site Warns of Border Violence

“We see a lot of things, but we keep our mouths shut about it,” the farmer whose identity was concealed says in one video clip. “We just don’t want to be in anybody’s hit list.”

The Web site behind these videos — ProtectYourTexasBorder.com — is run by neither a Minuteman-style border patrol group nor a tech-savvy rancher. It is a product of Texas state government, created and operated by the Department of Agriculture, as a way to publicize the assertions by farmers and others that violence from Mexico’s drug war has spilled over the border. But it has a more political mission as well: to publicly challenge the Obama administration, which has called the belief that the border is overrun by violence from Mexican drug cartels “a widespread misperception.”

Begun in March, ProtectYourTexasBorder.com steers a Texas agency typically concerned with detecting plant diseases and regulating grain-storage warehouses into the more controversial realm of domestic security. It paints a frightening portrait of life along the 1,254-mile border that Texas shares with Mexico. One man talks about quitting the farming business out of fear for his family’s safety. There are police reports and news accounts of a ranch foreman getting injured by shattered glass after drug-smuggling suspects shot at his truck, vehicles being pursued by law enforcement crashing through farm fences and workers clearing trees being told to stop what they were doing or else.

“I would have 80-year-old ranchers meet with me, tears in their eyes, and say, ‘My family settled this land, I’ve been here my entire life and I’m scared to go on my own property,’ ” said the state’s agriculture commissioner, Todd Staples, who came up with the idea for the Web site. “That’s how I got involved, because landowners came to me.”

Mr. Staples’s focus on the border echoes the views of one of his predecessors, Gov. Rick Perry, who served as agriculture commissioner in the 1990s and who struck some of the same themes in his campaign for president. One month after starting the Web site, Mr. Staples announced that he was running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2014. The Web site has raised his public profile and helped draw attention to farmers’ safety concerns.

But its larger impact remains unclear.

In its first roughly nine months, from last March through November, the Web site had only about 7,500 visitors a month. Though it seeks to put pressure on the federal government to protect farmers better, it has not drawn a federal response, and some federal officials say they have not even seen it. The Web site has also been accused of exaggerating the level of violence and fueling anti-immigrant hostility.

Last year on the site’s message board, someone suggested land mines and tiger traps as border-security methods. Another commenter wrote: “Killem all!!!! They are destroying or great country.” Agriculture officials deleted those posts, and a message-board disclaimer states that the views expressed did not reflect those of the department or Mr. Staples.

No one who appears on the Web site’s video clips makes threatening remarks. But several portray the rural areas along the border as nothing less than a war zone. In one video, Arthur Barrera, a staff lieutenant with the Texas Rangers, says the Mexican cartels and their scouts come across the border daily. “We are in a war,” he says. “We are in a war, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it by any means.”

Though the Web site provides few crime statistics to make its case, relying instead on people telling their stories in their own words, ProtectYourTexasBorder.com underscores the widespread fear in rural border counties. The threat of cartel-related crime, whether the smuggling of drugs or illegal immigrants, has caused people to arm themselves to an extraordinary degree and take other precautions.

In the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, at a ranch outside Sullivan City about 11 miles from the border, Craig J. Teplicek carries a .380-caliber pistol in the back pocket of his jeans. In his truck he keeps a .357-caliber handgun, a .45-caliber pistol and a .222-caliber rifle. Last year, he chased and tackled a coyote — someone who guides and smuggles people across the border — after the man drove through a fence and abandoned a truck carrying illegal immigrants in one of his fields. Mr. Teplicek ran after the man, carrying his .357.

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The Texas Tribune: In Texas Border Town, Drawing a Line on Coal for Mexico

But Mr. Baxter may be gearing up for his toughest battle yet, as he and a coalition of residents in his adopted town of Eagle Pass — across the border from Piedras Negras, Mexico — fight a coal partnership that they say is intent on destroying their peaceful way of life.

The Dos Republicas Coal Partnership, which is owned by Mexican mining companies, has applied to renew a permit that would let its American partners mine about 6,300 acres of land in the border town. An existing permit already allows for mining, but officials said that work has not started because of several attempts to modify the permit to meet specifications, as well as supply-and-demand issues affecting potential customers.

Residents worry that the mining will harm the environment and that they will lose land due to property damage. They are also concerned about having a Mexican company that is held to lower standards operate in Texas. Adding salt to their wounds is the fact that the coal, considered to be of too low quality to be burned in the United States, will be shipped to Mexico.

A spokesman for Dos Republicas, which partners with North American Coal Corporation and a subsidiary, Camino Real Fuels, both based in Plano, said criticism of the partnership was unwarranted and the result of a misunderstanding.

For now, the opposition is united. The Eagle Pass City Council and Maverick County Commissioners Court have approved resolutions opposing the project. The school and hospital districts, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, are also protesting the project.

“Coal that generates electric power has got to come from somewhere,” Mr. Baxter said at a recent town hall meeting. “But the fact that we are going to suffer all the consequences and all the power goes to Mexico is really the sticking point in my mind.”

The permit application has set up the latest chapter in what the residents call a David-versus-Goliath battle against a corporation with deep pockets — deep enough to hire lawyers who could persuade the Texas Railroad Commission’s three members to grant the permit. That would pave the way for the company to mine as much as 2.8 million tons of coal annually.

Rudy Rodriguez, a partner with Rodriguez Industries and Operations, which handles public relations for Dos Republicas, said the firm’s role in the proposed operation is overblown.

The belief that “a Mexican company is operating here is not the case,” he said. “They are merely investors owning a permit.”

Mr. Rodriguez said that the onus to comply with state and federal regulations, which he said are vastly different from Mexican policies, is on the American companies, which would manage the daily mining operations.

“The companies meet the regulations in Mexico and in the United States,” he said. “The company, North American Coal, that comes over to operate this can’t have a black eye on this permit because it impacts their whole operation in the United States.”

But people in Eagle Pass say that even if the regulations are met, the residents are in danger of being poisoned. They fear that the transport of low-quality coal will release particles into the air that will affect their breathing, and that discharge from mining operations will run off into the creek that feeds into the Rio Grande, the city’s main water source. The blasting, which officials with the coal companies said is possible if needed, could disrupt the already fragile terrain that is vulnerable to sinkholes, a byproduct of mining in the area over the last century.

“What we want is for our voices to be heard because we feel like we are being discriminated against,” said Martha Baxter, Mr. Baxter’s wife. “Is it because we’re a poor community and don’t have a lot of money and fancy lawyers?”

Mr. Rodriguez said that what the residents of Eagle Pass do not understand is that there is already coal moving through the city. Rail traffic that moves coal from sites farther north already passes through.

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