A human smuggler has been sentenced to 15 years in prison following a jury trial in South Texas.
The smuggler, Deshawn Dawayne Griffin, was arrested and indicted last year in Kinney County on five counts of human smuggling.
The 63rd District Attorney’s Office prosecuted the case, with a Kinney County jury returning a guilty verdict Wednesday.
“Kinney County jurors sent a very clear message in their 15 year guilty verdict. The only smuggling the defendant will be able to do now is from inside his prison cell,” Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told Texas Scorecard.
Kinney County is a border county deluged with illegal smuggling operations as it’s nestled between two legal ports of entry in Maverick and Val Verde counties. County residents have faced unprecedented chaos from the increased border crossings.
In one instance, a human smuggler linked to a cartel drove through 16 properties while attempting to evade Border Patrol. The property owners suffered an estimated $150,000 in damages.
Recent data has revealed that in addition to the massive number of illegal border crossings, the number of gotaways—illegal crossers who are seen or detected by Border Patrol but not captured—also rose under President Joe Biden.
The number spiked from around 100,000 year-over-year from fiscal years 2010-2020 to as high as 670,674 by FY 2023.
There have been over 7 million Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens since Biden took office, according to publicly available data—not including the gotaways.
Kinney County officials have asked the governor to call a special legislative session for the purpose of creating a statewide border force to handle border-related crimes.
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