Elite undercover Texas agents disguise themselves as migrants to apprehend smugglers

El Paso, Texas — Sporting saggy blue denims and hoodies and looking out scruffy and unkempt, the state’s elite undercover squad might simply be mistaken for the bedraggled smugglers they’re attempting to apprehend, or the migrants pouring over the southern border from Mexico.

These specifically skilled members of the Legal Investigation Division of the Texas Division of Public Security have maybe probably the most harmful job on the border, appearing as double brokers and going through sure demise if their cowl is blown.

Their mission is to mix in with the migrant hordes, establish and apprehend cartel members, human traffickers and drug sellers, as a part of the DPS’ efforts to maintain felony parts from coming into the US.

The unit is so secretive DPS officers refuse to say what number of brokers are a part of the division, the place they particularly function or permit them to pose for images which might reveal their id, as a result of considerations for his or her security.

“We actually can’t say something,” mentioned Matthew Mull, Main with the DPS’s Legal Investigation Division in El Paso throughout The Publish’s ride-along with DPS earlier this week.

Members of the CID labored alongside DPS’s pilots to supply them with coordinates to chase down a gaggle of smugglers transporting greater than a dozen migrants in an overloaded Jeep Wednesday.

A handful of CID brokers of their denims and hoodies swooped right into a stash home and arrested two younger smugglers.

The Publish’s eyewitness reporter on the raid mentioned: “We couldn’t inform the distinction between who had been the migrants and who had been the brokers. It was solely after they opened their coats that I noticed their badges. None of them spoke.”

The trooper who accompanied us mentioned they had been the elite group.

“They had been grizzled, hard-beaten guys who regarded like they’d seen all of it. Powerful guys.”

Cartels usually recruit teenage drivers from the US aspect of the border to move illegals in automobiles to and from stash homes.

Brokers for the CID are concerned in quite a few investigations and businesses on either side of the border.

Their web site states its “personnel collaborate with inside and exterior stakeholders from throughout the state and internationally to establish, examine, disrupt, and/or dismantle drug trafficking, human trafficking, and felony gang organizations.”

In addition to monitoring organized crime, a separate arm of the CID handles particular investigations, whereas one other presents surveillance, forensics and different assist.

The CID brokers supply a pointy distinction to their DPS counterparts, who put on tan uniforms and cowboy hats in addition to shiny black boots.

“That’s simply the way in which they like to decorate,” Mull instructed The Publish. “It’s usually the way in which they do enterprise.”

The CID unit was begun in the course of the Second World Battle and was then often called Legal Regulation Enforcement. In 2009, when DPS underwent an overhaul, the unit was renamed with a concentrate on intelligence gathering and together with a mentorship program for state troopers who can choose to coach with the unit, which additionally investigates automobile theft, Mull mentioned.