When I was on the boat patrol going up and down the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo for my Mexican readers), we never saw any alligators. It seemed strange because the Rio Grande seemed like prime alligator habitat. When I went back for a visit not long after I retired, I was surprised to see signs warning about alligators in the river. Doing a little research on it, I read that the mouth of the Rio Grande always had a few alligators. However, they never made it upriver as there were several dams in the way. Along came Hurricane Alex and flooded the area around several of these dams. Now, the alligators are making their way up the river.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) video.

Border Patrol video.

I would not like to be in that water when one of these comes along.

What’s next? Piranhas?

For boat school in the Border Patrol’s Georgia Training Academy, we actually went swimming in alligator country. Our trainers told us that the gators were scared off by the sound of an outboard engine and not to worry about them. We had to swim from one boat to another and then pull ourselves aboard the second boat using a rope that we had to make a knot in. We had heard from previous classes about this and that no one had been chewed on, so we did it with no problems.

As for the Rio Grande, how long before the ACLU sues the Border Patrol for not transporting illegal aliens across the river rather than subjecting them to cruel and inhumane treatment from alligators?

In the book Out on Foot: Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, author Rocky Elmore claimed that there was some evidence of cougars feeding off of illegal aliens as the aliens tried to sneak through the desert in the dark.

So far, I haven’t heard of any alligators attacking illegal aliens, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time.