West Texas Sheriff Sud Cleveland knows better than anyone that even the most distant parts of Lone Star state you can't take your eyes off the border. Despite slowing down illegal alien intersections across the country and increasing deportation, Cleveland told Breitbart Texas:
Cleveland, even in remote areas of Terrell County, West Texas, the slowdown in border crossings is dramatic and prominent, where he serves as sheriff. The county includes 90 miles of West Rio Grande, the county seat of Sanderson, which has fewer than 1,000 residents.
Over 2,000 square miles of harsh, brushed terrain includes plains at eastern and mountainous levels with canyons to the west. Parts of the county are at different elevations, with some rising from 1,300 to 4,000 feet above sea level. The harsh, sparsely populated topography attempts to cross counties on foot and across extremely dangerous counties.
Sheriff Cleveland knows the area very well. He was first appointed sheriff in May 2022 and later elected to the position he still holds today. Before becoming a sheriff, Cleveland spent more than 26 years in the U.S. Border Patrol, serving in several border departments around the country. Cleveland has served as a patrol agent for the Sanderson Border Patrol for the past 11 years.
Breitbart Texas spoke at length to Cleveland about what he saw since President Trump took office and his return to stricter border security policies. Cleveland says the results are prominent in the number of smuggling attempts seen on local highways.
The presence of smugglers on the highway has been reduced, but Cleveland says they are still occurring and will take the same risks to residents of small rural counties.
“Smugglers come to our community, and the country is the same. If they flee the authorities and clash with innocent civilians, that's one more time,” Cleveland told Breitbart Texas. Despite retiring from Border Patrol, Cleveland continues to use his skills as a tracker. He allows deputies to work together with the Border Patrol, the Texas Department of Public Safety's Highway Patrol and the Texas Military Department to jointly carry out border security missions.
“It's roughly terrain and tracking people trying to cross here is a time-consuming process,” the sheriff explained. “The latest joint pursuit effort to successfully arrest a group of illegal aliens on border patrol took 16 hours to resolve and cover dozens of miles of terrain.”
“It's important that we succeed and continue our work, as we don't know who we are dealing with until we get anxious,” Cleveland emphasized.
Cleveland and his agent noticed that some commonalities between illegal aliens groups continue to try to cross his county. Dressing methods make it difficult to detect illegal groups of boundaries. It discourages some women and children from trekking on foot during the extreme temperatures in the area, especially during the hot Texas summers.
Between May 2022 and February 2025, Terrell County Sheriff's deputies arrested nearly 2,000 illegal aliens, documenting just a few deputies and 209 border-related attacks. According to Cleveland, the Biden administration's legacy over the past two years is the deaths of 31 illegal foreigners that occurred in his county. Cleveland's agent assisted the Border Patrol and state officials in arrests of thousands more.
According to CBP, illegal alien intersections have skyrocketed within the once quiet Big Bend sector surrounding Sanderson, Texas. Between 2017 and 2019, the sector had an uncertainty of less than 10,000 a year. By 2022, the number of illegal foreigners' anxiety had risen to over 31,000. In February, CBP recorded concerns among just 165 illegal aliens, compared to more than 3,000 in February 2022, just before Cleveland took office.
Cleveland summed up the current border situation and said that officials along the border could not lose focus even if illegal intersections drop to zero. “Cartels and independent smugglers will never stop trying to avoid people and smuggling across borders. Our citizens hope that we will be there and we will remain vigilant,” Cleveland concluded.
Randy Clark He is a 32-year veteran of the US Border Patrol. Before retiring, he served as Chief of Law Enforcement Business and oversaw the operations of nine Border Patrol Bureaus in Del Rio, Texas. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @randyclarkbbtx.
