Inside a border patrol sting on migrant smugglers in the Texas desert

Braggadocious human traffickers showed off a successful smuggling operation through the West Texas desert in a video posted to YouTube — which gave away their location to eagle eyed border patrol agents who promptly busted them, according to the local sheriff.

“Cartels were bragging on social media,” Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland told The Post as he provided a tour of Terrell County, which has become a smuggling corridor with a 540% increase in migrant arrests in the last two years.

“One of our agents saw it; we recognized the area and it allowed us to come to this area about five miles north of Sanderson.”

An intelligence officer for the US Border Patrol in plain clothing found the location — stumbling on what cops call a “lay up spot” where migrants, who have walked anywhere between two to four days from the US-Mexico border to Sanderson, make a pit stop.

There, they rest and hide in the brush until they are picked up by a different smuggler who will drive them further into the country, Cleveland added.

Posing as the smuggler in an unmarked truck, the agent simply honked his horn — a signal alerting illegal immigrants to come out out of hiding and into the get away car.

In a video of the incident provided by Sheriff Cleveland camouflaged migrants can be seen running out of the brush and piling into the agent’s pick-up truck.

“Get on, get on,” the agent can be heard saying to the migrants in Spanish. “ Hurry! Hurry! Are there more?”

However, instead of the safe house they were expecting, the five migrants were immediately driven over to the Border Patrol station and arrested for entering the country illegally.

The incident is just one example of the 7,400 border crossers who were stopped by law enforcement in remote Terrell County in 2022, according to the sheriff’s office, proving that no place on the border is immune to the on-going crisis.

Another 8,000 illegals were considered “gotaways”— migrants who the authorities know crossed into the US but either escaped, or agents weren’t able to apprehend.

“We’re seeing [them] but we can’t chase them because we don’t have enough people to go out there and give chase,” the former Border Patrol agent said.

In a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, Cleveland requested additional boots on the ground as his three-person department and the 50 agents permanently assigned to the region can’t keep up.

The state has responded, offering to send more Texas troopers to help out. However, until the help arrives Cleveland doesn’t have enough staffing to post an officer at the newly discovered smuggling waypoint.

Investigators returned to the area and found a tree that’s been serving as a migrant waiting area.

“They put all their trash in one location, cleaned it up, that’s not something we’re used to seeing,” he added. “They definitely were successful in this area and they didn’t want to be discovered by agents or landowners with the amount of trash they have.”

The Post toured the spot, finding abandoned backpacks, which Cleveland explained the migrants wear when they cross into the the US to walk through the desert. The sacks have a clean change of clothing since they’re usually wet after from crossing the Rio Grande, which serves is also the international boundary. They also carry water, small amounts of food and and fresh garlic for snake bites.

“This area is their last stop before they get picked up there at the highway which is a couple hundred yards north,” the sheriff demonstrated. “There’s a very good canopy for shade as they wait to get picked up. This area provides great cover and concealment.”

The sheriff predicts smuggling activity in the area will go cold for a while now that law enforcement knows about, but will eventually pick back up.

“They’ll come back and utilize those spots again,” he stated. “It’s a numbers game. They have numerous areas they use, and they’ll bounce around for a while until they think we’ve forgotten about it, but that’s why we keep checking them.”