Texas Criminal Lawyer Blog

As a West Texas Criminal Lawyer, I frequently travel to remote parts of the state in defense of clients who have been arrested for small quantities of marijuana or drugs found in their cars as the result of highway stops by Texas troopers on Interstates 10 or 20, or at the Border Patrol checkpoint at Sierra Blanca.

Recently while driving to a pre-trial hearing in Sierra Blanca, I stopped for gas in Van Horn, which lies 35 miles to the east of Sierra Blanca along Interstate 10 in far west Texas. As I got out of my car I counted 37 Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles in one motel parking lot. The longer I stayed, the more DPS cars I saw. As it was late in the evening, I noticed troopers standing by their patrol cars conversing with each other or with U.S. Border Patrol agents parked in their familiar green and white 4 wheel drive trucks

Van Horn, a town of about 2,500 people, is headquarters for border enforcement for over a thousand square miles of ruggedly beautiful desert adjoining the Mexican border. From Pecos on IH 20 to Sierra Blanca on IH 10, down to Fort Davis, Marfa, and Alpine in the Big Bend country, and then along IH 10 from Fort Stockton in Pecos County to Ozona in Crockett County to Sonora in Sutton County, the Texas troopers patrol the highways in search of illegal drugs and illegal aliens. As the speed limit is 80 mph for two hundred miles east of the El Paso County line, speeding tickets shouldn't generate too many traffic stops.

However, I spotted over a dozen troopers working the interstate between Pecos and Van Horn, a distance of about 85 miles. Some cars were cruising at below speed limit, and some were parked in the median or on the side of the road, usually at the bend of a winding stretch of IH 10 through the mountain passes.

On one of my trips through Van Horn, I happened to be present during a DPS shift change. I watched as troopers emerged from their motel rooms to start their patrol for the night. I have learned that DPS troopers come from all over Texas for their temporary duty in the trans Pecos desert. I was told by a local motel clerk that the Department of Public Safety even rotates the motels where the troopers are housed in order to accommodate the local businesses.

It is no wonder that the Culbertson County Courthouse is a busy place; it is also no wonder that the courthouses in Hudspeth, Brewster, Pecos, and Jeff Davis counties are busy places as well. This kind of activity also extends two hundred miles to the east as far as Ozona and Sonora, where prosecutors face dockets loaded with drug cases made by searches of cars on the interstate.

All of these remote little courthouses have crowded dockets of cases against young people from out-of -state who are charged with possession of small amounts of drugs and who have had to post bail and pay storage charges on their cars impounded after their arrest.

For these areas, business is booming.