Will Newly-Installed DA Luis Saenz Step on Political Toes to Close Down the Rest of the 8-Liners?

District Attorney Luis Saenz

Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos and District Attorney Luis Saenz held a joint news conference Saturday morning to announce the shutdown of five county 8-liner gambling establishments.  For the news event, Saenz wore a red power tie while Cascos was characteristically tieless.  The establishments were shutdown without a shot fired in La Feria, Olmito, San Benito, Harlingen and Brownsville.

Saenz indicated that Operation Bishop was just beginning:

“The average eight-liner business generates thousands of dollars in revenue daily,” said District Attorney Luis V. Saenz.

“This is revenue known to benefit organized crime. This is revenue that doesn’t benefit our community, because it’s not being spent in our community.”

(It is estimated that the eight-liner industry generates at least $300 million annually. The money is known to leave the County and even Texas.)

“When money stays in the community, sales tax revenue goes to your local governments and allows them to provide resources for you – better streets, more libraries, more services, etc. Let’s not forget job creation and sustainability,”

Saenz added. “I look forward to the day I can run a steam roller over them.”

Duardo Paz-Martinez, editor of the Dos Frias blog, who frequently pontificates about events in Brownsville and Bangkok, Thailand from his home near Austin, Texas, was not impressed:

"...Someone famous once said of the whorehouses in Tijuana that you could take a match to those places, burn them to the ground and it wouldn't be but a day or two before some others would open somewhere else. It seems the law went out of its air-conditioned way today to bust a handful of those dreaded 8-liner businesses in Cameron County. Good story for the Sunday morning paper, but it's just one cancer cell on the region's diseased body. Too many other open societal sores to count. Seems the county judge and the new district attorney were in on the morning raid. Suffice it to say that this - again - smacks of law enforcement opportunism. You know, and I know, that those 8-liner operators could have been busted on any of the previous 365 days. Ho-hum..."

(Editor's note:  In fairness to Saenz, he was just elected in November, taking office in January.  So, he has not had 365 days to deal with 8-liners or anything else.  His predecessor, the indicted Armando Villalobos gave the taxpayers zero cents on the dollar in terms of prosecuting corruption.)

Luis Saenz, Carlos Masso

Shutting down the rest of Cameron County's 200 8-liners may be politically tricky.  Former Brownsville mayor Patricio Ahumada is said to own two of them, one in the building formerly rented by The New York Deli at Price Road and the expressway and another called Charlie's Angels on Boca Chica.  Saenz opponent in the Democratic runoff, Carlos Masso was also repeatedly alleged by Saenz Campaign Manager Zeke Silva(albeit under aliases) to be closely connected to the 8-liners.