Armed only with shovels, the trio dug a 400-foot ditch in two days to free up the Rio Grande at Boca Chica Beach and send the water on its way for the first time in almost a year. The ditch is designed to relieve residual flooding caused by the clogged river.

"It almost takes an act of Congress to do something like that," Xavier Rios, supervisory Border Patrol agent in McAllen, said in the Brownsville Herald Wednesday. An official dredging project failed after four months because the flow wasn't enough to prevent sediment from rebuilding.