(The Center Square) – With a lack of funding and support from Canadian officials, First Nation police chiefs on the front lines of border security have turned to men they’d never met for help: Texas sheriffs.
This week, they joined sheriffs who’ve been spearheading Texas border security efforts through a task force led by Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd. It was created at the height of the border crisis through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star. Initially, a handful of sheriffs joined Boyd determined to stop cartel operatives from infiltrating their communities; now, more than 60 jurisdictions have joined.
In Lavaca County, a sheriff’s deputy arrested a Salvadoran man who illegally entered the U.S. after he was accused of torturing and beheading four people. Had the OLS deputy not arrested him, he’d be roaming free in a rural community located an hour from Houston, The Center Square learned during an exclusive ride-along with the task force.
On Monday, Jim Wells County Sheriff Joseph Guy Baker led a briefing with Boyd and several dozen task force members to discuss how they might help First Nation police chiefs. Their jurisdictions are inundated with crime and they have limited resources, they said. They are facing similar struggles Texas sheriffs faced until the Texas legislature and Abbott provided resources through OLS, Boyd told The Center Square.
During the Biden administration, Texas sheriffs were overrun, apprehending human smugglers, rescuing children stuffed in car trunks, finding dozens of people crammed in 18-wheelers, finding stash houses, breaking up smuggling and trafficking rings and making an unprecedented number of arrests of military age men that their jails were full, The Center Square reported. They are from counties whose leaders issued disaster declarations and declared an invasion for the first time in U.S. history, The Center Square exclusively reported.
Texas sheriffs, like First Nation police chiefs, are on the front lines of border security.
This was the first time in U.S. history that First Nations police chiefs traveled to a U.S. state to conduct joint counter-cartel and anti-smuggling operations.
“Nothing of this scale, structure, or purpose has ever been attempted between tribal authorities in Canada and U.S. state-level forces,” Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Ammon Blair told The Center Square.
During the Biden administration, the greatest number of illegal border crossers, including the greatest number of people on the terrorist watch list, were apprehended at the U.S.-Canada border, where no operational control has existed, The Center Square exclusively reported. Multiple states were inundated with unprecedent border crime and illegal crossings, including in Vermont, and upstate New York, which saw the greatest number of illegal crossings of the 14 northern border states, The Center Square reported.
Transnational crime is occurring through the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation (AMIR), which is located in upstate New York and Canada and straddles the St. Lawrence River, The Center Square reported. Akwesasne Mohawk Territory’s Chief of Police, Ranatiiostha Swamp, was among those who came to Texas.
AMIR is dealing with drugs, weapons and human smuggling and “the vast amount of area that we have to cover is primarily divided by water,” he said. “We're not even touching it [transnational crime] because of the amount of open spaces” and lack of resources.
Dwayne Zacharie, First Nations Chiefs of Police president, said he came to Texas seeking “an opportunity for all of us to build a partnership.”
More than 130,000 commuters go through his territory to access Montreal. While provincial police receive more funding, they aren’t interdicting crime that impacts First Nation communities, Zacharie said. Canadian authorities also “don't share information with us. They don't provide us with opportunities for training. They don't provide us with resourcing that's commensurate with our needs.”
“I'd like to see a partnership grow and flourish out of” his time in Texas, he said, “because we do see the impacts in our communities as police officers. We see MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, Hell's Angels. All of these organized crime entities come into our communities because in their minds, the picking is ripe because we don't have the resources.”
The First Nation chiefs also believe the U.S. can help because of President Donald Trump’s leadership. In response to Trump telling Canadian leaders they had to implement border security measures, they increased funding but “First Nation policing didn't see any influx of resources, didn't see any upgrades in training,” Zacharie said. “At the end of the day, we all know that organized crime, where are they going to go? Right where the big strong guys are or are they going to find where the weaknesses are and are they going to exploit that? So that's the reality.”
“Cartel networks, criminal pipelines, and foreign influence are destabilizing communities across the continent, including First Nations territories,” Blair said. “For years, these chiefs have been left to fight cartel and foreign-backed hybrid-threat networks essentially alone. They have been outmanned, outgunned, out-funded, out-resourced, and outmaneuvered by Sinaloa, CJNG, CCP-backed triads, MS-13, Tier-1 gangs, and the wider ecosystem of transnational criminal organizations operating along the northern corridor.”
They came to Texas because they were “willing to do what others will not: expose, disrupt, and dismantle the networks eroding sovereignty across North America,” Blair said. Their desire for a solution “represents a landmark moment for North American security cooperation.”
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