A business owner near the southern border was forced to sell her family restaurant following frequent break-ins from migrants crossing the border.
“I worked alongside my father for 19 years,” said Selena Buentello Price, the former second-generation owner of The Wagon Wheel, a local barbecue joint. “One break-in in 25 years.”
“From February to now, I’ve had five,” Price said. “Not only has my business been broken into and ransacked—it’s just the insecurity now, you don’t feel safe at home anymore.”
The business owner said that her family restaurant has become a frequent stop for migrants arriving in Eagle Pass, adding that they have “completely overrun” the small town leading residents and business owners to feel unsafe.
“Two locations down from our original location, our smokehouse and our honky-tonk, we have this facility that assists in processing all these immigrants coming in,” Price said.
“Once they are processed — I literally see busloads on a daily basis — they’re just released, and they find sanctuary in anything that’s abandoned or not,” she continued. “What I had that I valued — that not only had sentimental value, but had actual monetary value — has depreciated thanks to the mess, the trash, the vandalism.”
Price eventually sold her family business after reaching a breaking point when she encountered an intruder on her property one evening.
The U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers after the Biden administration announced that it would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
The Customs and Border Protection reported recently that the number of migrant encounters at the southern border has reached the two-million mark this fiscal year, breaching the already-historic 1.7 million encounters last year.
The swarm of illegal immigrants in nearby border cities has also resulted in property damage, stolen vehicles, gun violence, and other issues resulting from migrants crossing into their counties, many of which are desolate and have sparse populations.
“In my community, we have less than 1,000 residents. The thousand residents everyday live in fear of the invasion,” said Dale Lynn Carruthers, the county judge for Terrell County. “We are doing the best we can with limited manpower. Terrell County has the least to offer… but we have a lot of border coverage.”
