Webb County Sheriff | The border camera network

Most of Webb County is ranch land, and the county is one of the largest in Texas. Since 2017 the Sheriff’s Office has been fitting that land with thermal cameras, and every one of them was bought with money from a border security program rather than from the county.

Bought in pieces

It starts in June 2017 with four border surveillance cameras from Tri-M Group at $180,000, approved on a sole source exemption using Operation Stonegarden funds. The item gives its whole reasoning in one line: surveillance cameras “have been recognized and utilized by federal, state, and local agencies as important force multipliers for border security”.^[1] Three commissioners were present; it carried three to nothing.

Five years later the money came from Operation Lone Star, the state program, and the purchases came faster. Eight thermal monoculars in May 2022.^[5] In June, five thermal cameras “to retrofit four (4) mobile surveillance trailers and one (1) mobile Command Center” for up to $239,995.^[2] That item is the first confirmation in the county’s record that four mobile surveillance trailers exist at all; the Court was approving an upgrade to equipment it had not been asked to buy.

The places with names

In October 2022 the Court awarded a thermal security camera project to Zenitram Communications at up to $90,487, and this item does something the others do not: it names the sites. Cameras at the El Cenizo water tank, the Rio Bravo water tank, Los Botines Tower and Las Lomas.^[3]

El Cenizo and Rio Bravo are small cities south of Laredo. Las Lomas is a community on the river. These are not crossings or checkpoints; they are places where people live, and a water tank is simply the tallest thing around.

Three kilometers

In July 2023 the Court was asked to ratify, meaning to approve after the fact, the purchase of three AXIS bi-spectral pan-tilt-zoom cameras for up to $62,442. The item explains what they do: the office is buying “three outdoor PTZ cameras with capability to detect persons as far as 3 km with electronic image stabilization and thermal detection for border surveillance”.^[4]

Three kilometers is most of the way across a town.

What the record does not hold

There is no inventory. The Court has approved cameras five times and has never been given, and has never asked for, a list of what is running and where. There is no statement of whether the cameras record continuously or only when something moves, no retention period, and no document connecting them to the Sheriff’s real time crime center, though that system’s own items say it “manages the real time crime center and border security assets”.^[6]

A camera bought to watch a border and a camera bought to watch a town are the same camera. What separates them is a policy saying which one it is, and Webb County’s public record does not contain one. That is a question a resident can put to the Court, and the Commissioners Court page explains how.