Governor Abbott said Friday there's been a "slight uptick" in crossings along the Texas border. I read the story and my first thought was: well, there's a surprise that isn't one. Anybody who lives down here could've told him that a month ago without a press conference. You can read the details yourself here.

Here's how this works on the ground. Enforcement pressure goes up, traffic drops. Everybody pats themselves on the back, the cameras go home, and the cartels adjust. They always adjust. They watch the patrol patterns, they watch where the wall crews are working, and they route people around it. A dip in numbers for a few months means the corridor moved, not that it closed. Usually onto somebody's ranch, and usually onto mine.

We've seen cut fence up the county again in the last few weeks, the kind of fresh splices you find when a guide is running a new line through country he hasn't used before. Water lines get punctured, troughs get drained, and a group of twenty people can empty a stock tank in an evening when it's still hitting 95 degrees in October. The governor's press availability never covers that part. In Kinney County the uptick shows up as a vet bill, a fencing bill, and a morning spent hauling water to pasture that already had water.

Operation Lone Star is still out there, and credit where it's due, the state presence matters. DPS troopers, the barriers, the camera towers, all of it has made this harder for the cartels than it was five years ago, and harder is the only thing that's ever worked. When the traffic shifted away from our section for a stretch this summer, I'll admit it was pleasant. Quiet mornings, gates that stayed shut, no headlights cutting across the pasture at 3 a.m. You get used to that fast. Then September rolls around and the traffic creeps back and you remember nothing down here stays fixed.

The smugglers run hot and cold with the seasons anyway. Cooler weather in October and November historically brings more foot traffic through the ranch country because people can survive the walk. The brush in August kills people; the brush in October just hurts. The cartels know it, DPS knows it, and every rancher from here to Big Bend knows it. So a slight uptick right now is about as predictable as a mesquite thorn in a tire.

What matters is what happens next. An uptick gets noticed, or it gets explained away. The state keeps the troopers deployed and the cameras maintained, or somebody decides the numbers look good enough and starts pulling resources to look thrifty. I've watched that cycle my whole adult life. The corridor always tells you the truth before the press conference does.

I'll keep fixing what gets cut and calling in what I find. That part's not changing. But when the governor says "slight uptick," understand what that means in Kinney County terms: somebody's fence got cut last night, and tomorrow morning somebody's going to find where.