Town Hall meeting shows major problem at border

By Cameron Wallace

The Cuero Record

“I’m witnessing tons and tons of children that are coming through this porous border every single night. If we as a country cannot stand up for the most vulnerable, we have no moral high ground to stand on.”

Those were among the opening comments from independent journalist Anthony Agüero, who has spent the last four years reporting on activity along the Texas border with Mexico.

Agüero was one of the guest speakers at a town hall meeting on Monday, Oct. 25 at the Cuero Park Clubhouse.

“My main purpose for being out there is shedding light in to the brutalities that we are witnessing.”

Agüero emphasized that the problems at the border are not partisan ones. “If you want to be p*ssed off at somebody, be p*ssed off at the politicians we all elected. Republicans and Democrats. They’re all kicking the can down the road in the same direction.”

The packed Park Clubhouse was silent as Agüero told the audience “a lot of these kids that are being brought are being trafficked. Whats really, really sad and disheartening, what really hit me the hardest, is watching these kids sedated. To see it in person is something you’re going to take with you for the rest of your life.”

He continued, “people ask me ‘what is the worst thing you’ve ever experienced out there? What’s the most gruesome?’ You really want to know?”

Agüero continued, “Two and a half months ago, I was at Del Rio and it was about 2:30 in the afternoon. And a group of about 80 individuals...were cleared out of there...to be processed.”

“We finally got to unwind a little bit, and we sat down...and within a few minutes we started hearing moaning and screaming, so we jumped up--this was myself and a DHS (Department of Homeland Security) agent--we jumped, looked around, across the river, and probably within a hundred feet of us...what appeared to be a 40-year old man raping a 12-year old little girl. I felt helpless. I never witnessed anything like that, and never in my life would I have expected to witness; those screams, I hear them at night sometimes. I try to go to sleep and I hear that little girl, and I wonder if there was more I could have done. Unfortunately, as a reporter, I’m not law enforcement, me crossing the river would have done nobody any good. It was completely out of my hands.”

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