UVALDE, Texas (AP) – Teachers and students at Robb Elementary School knew the safety protocols when an 18-year-old with an AR-15 rifle entered the building in May. Dozens of times in the previous four months alone, the campus had been on lockdown or issued security alerts.
Not because of active shooter fears — because of the close, often high-speed pursuits of migrants coming from the US-Mexico border.
An entire generation of college students in America has grown up simulating active shooter lockdowns, or worse, experiencing the real thing. But in South Texas, along the 1,200-mile stretch of the state’s southern border, another unique kind of classroom lockdown is happening: huddling because Border Patrol or state police agents are chasing migrants trying to avoid apprehension.
The frequency of lockdowns and security alerts at Uvalde — nearly 50 between February and May alone, according to school officials — is now being viewed by investigators as one of the tragic reasons for how a gunman was able to enter a fourth-grade classroom unimpeded and go on a rampage. 19 children and two teachers. While the slow and inept police response remains the primary failure, a damning new Texas House report says repeated lockdowns in Uvalde have created a “diminished sense of vigilance.”
With the new school year now just weeks away in heavily patrolled South Texas, there are fears the lockdown will resume and deepen the trauma for scarred Uvalde students as migrant numbers remain high and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continues to expands a large-scale border security operation.
“It was probably, just complacency, because it happens a lot,” said Uvalde County Justice of the Peace Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz Jr., who had to identify the bodies of the dead at Robb Elementary School.
The new findings that Uvalde’s lockdown culture played some role in the May 24 failures reflect how one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history intersected with immigration policies and thousands of Border Patrol agents, members of the National Guard and state police assigned to apprehend migrants and stop drug traffickers. Of the nearly 400 law enforcement officers on the scene at Robb Elementary, more than half are Border Patrol or state police agents, according to the report.
On Tuesday, in the span of just 20 minutes, eight state police vehicles and Border Patrol SUVs rolled through Uvalde’s central plaza, less than a mile from Robb Elementary.
Uvalde is about an hour’s drive from the Mexican border, located at the crossroads of two major state highways. Nearby are the towns of Pearsall, Dilley and Karnes – all of which have immigration detention centers with some of the highest populations in the nation. More than 4,500 detainees were in total at the three facilities as of June 2022, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Jazmin Cazares, whose 9-year-old sister Jaclyn was among the students killed, told Texas lawmakers in June that no one in the school district took the lockdown seriously “until this day.” She said she is now terrified to return for her senior year in the fall.
“Will I survive it? Unbelievable,” Cazares said.
Even the first officers on the scene at Robb Elementary wondered if the threat was a so-called “rescue,” the term used by law enforcement along the border to describe suspected migrants or drug traffickers who had escaped. Pete Arendondo, the Uvalde school police chief who has become the target of angry demands from parents that he resign or be fired, told a House committee that the thought crossed his mind because it happens so often.
The gunman entered Robb Elementary School at 11:33 a.m. One minute earlier, according to the report, a fourth-grade teacher in room 105 received a lockdown alert and made sure her classroom door was locked. That teacher also told the committee she saw a teacher across the street locking the door to room 112, one of two adjoining rooms where the shooting took place.
The shooter is believed to have entered the classroom through room 111, which is known to have problems locking properly.
The signal that the school’s warning system sends does not specify the potential threat. And because of the proliferation of lockdowns in recent months, according to the report, many teachers and administrators “assumed this was another bailout.”
“Rescue” has become an increasingly common part of Uvalde’s vernacular over the past year as the area has become extremely busy with migrants crossing illegally, mainly from countries outside of Mexico and northern Central America.
The Border Patrol Sector based in Del Rio, Texas – one of nine along the Mexico border – was the most transited illegal crossing corridor in June, replacing the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. For most of the year, the two sectors of South Texas have posted similar numbers of boundary encounters, well ahead of others in California, Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas.
Although many migrants surrender to the Border Patrol in the border towns of Del Rio and Eagle Pass – each about an hour’s drive from Uvalde – many seek to evade capture for hours or days by hiding in “hidden houses” or in high-rises fields of corn and other crops for the smugglers to pick up at a prearranged location for the trip to San Antonio.
The commission’s report said there had been no incidents of “rescue-related” violence on Uvalde’s school campuses before the shooting. The high-speed driving sometimes crossed school parking lots, according to the report, which also said some pursuits involved firearms in surrounding neighborhoods.
Diaz, the justice of the peace in Uvalde, served as magistrate when police made arrests in the area as part of the governor’s massive border mobilization known as Operation Lone Star. It sets bail for people arrested for suspected people or drug smuggling, but also for crimes unrelated to national security, such as minor drug charges.
He said Abbott’s surgery did not make Uvalde safer.
“These people who come through don’t want to be in Uvalde,” Diaz said. “They’re looking to get out of the border, and we’re too close.”
Over the past decade, many police departments have moved away from involving officers in car chases because they pose a danger to the public. A 2017 Justice Department report found that between 1996 and 2015, police pursuits killed an average of 355 people a year, with nearly a third of those killed in vehicles not involved in the pursuit.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, who said he hasn’t spoken to Abbott in nearly a month, called on the governor to do more along the border to limit migrant crossings. With classes due to start again in less than two months, he worries about “saving schools and so on” and said “this has to stop”.
Angie Villescaz, who grew up in Uvalde and founded the Latino mother advocacy group Fierce Madres with local mothers after the shooting, said the border rhetoric distracts from the most pressing issue.
“They’ve always wanted to maintain the narrative of securing the border,” Villescaz said, “and now they can’t because it’s about securing our schools.”
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Coronado reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
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