What’s happening at the southern U.S. border with Mexico is in fact an invasion, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe says.

“We’re experiencing a silent invasion of military age men,” Coe told The Center Square when describing what his deputies have been increasingly facing over the past two years.

He spoke with The Center Square during an Operation Lone Star task force multi-day operation during which law enforcement officers rescued foreign nationals from a burning vehicle and revived a five-year-old girl being smuggled who’d been stashed inside of a car’s trunk.