RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas – Community organizers and local residents in the border city of Brownsville remembered the dead as they huddled over plates of tamales, pan dulce and sugar skulls.
This year’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) vigil honored victims of state violence, including those killed in immigration crackdowns and detention. Days before the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, the event reverberated in a region long exposed to the shifting political winds in Washington, D.C.
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“The atmosphere here in the Rio Grande Valley, when it comes to ICE detention and ICE raids, there’s just a general atmosphere that there’s no real due process to this,” said community organizer Mark Anthony Vasquez, 52.
“What can we do to move and build together to get through this and make the changes we want?”
At a bookstore panel discussion on border and immigration policy a block away, 24-year-old Juliana Garcia raised her hand to ask for advice on how to find a lawyer who can navigate the aggressively changing policies of President Donald Trump’s administration. The regime is using both increased physical enforcement and reinterpretation of administrative policy to pursue a campaign of mass deportations.
Garcia’s aunt, a prominent member of the border town of Progreso’s community, was deported weeks ago after being summoned to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hearing. There, she learned that she had missed a court date regarding her immigration status.
Stressed out, she signed a voluntary eviction notice.
“Within 36 hours, she was deported,” Garcia told Al Jazeera, wedged between bookshelves. “People are starting to wake up and remember that no matter what branch you belong to, politics affects you every day.”
changing dynamics
Views of immigration are mixed in the Rio Grande Valley, a subtropical southeast Texas region of about 1.5 million people. Reformers say the complexity has only increased in recent years as border policy and immigration enforcement have become increasingly partisan, leading to dramatic policy shifts that impede more sustainable solutions.
It’s not hard to find residents of Latinos, or Tejano, the local term for Latino Texans, wary of Mr. Trump years before his return to office. After restrictive policies during President Trump’s first term, border crossings have increased dramatically under President Joe Biden, in part due to the end of a coronavirus-era policy that forced asylum seekers to wait for processing in Mexico.
Some felt that dealing with the fallout from the influx was left to border areas. Part of the dissatisfaction is believed to be due to Mr. Trump’s success in the 2024 presidential election in areas that were once reliably Democratic.
In Hidalgo County, where McAllen is located, Trump won 51% of the vote in 2024, giving him a three-point lead over Kamala Harris. In 2020, Biden beat Trump in the county by 17 points.
Trump lost neighboring Cameron County by 13 points in 2020, but won by about 5 points in 2024.
Voter Jose Arizpe, 40, of Brownsville, called the two years since President Trump took office a “positive change,” with fewer asylum seekers waiting to have their cases processed in the United States.
After taking office, President Trump declared a state of emergency at the border and halted asylum applications that rights groups say violates U.S. law. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled that U.S. border officials can physically prevent asylum seekers from reaching U.S. soil and applying for asylum.
“A lot of people say they support illegal aliens and they want to put them in their homes,” said Arizpe, a regular Republican voter. “But I say, ‘Please put them in my homes,’ and they don’t want to do that, do they?”
Martin Torres, 55, who voted for a Democrat at the Brownsville public library as part of the state’s early voting campaign, said he was “initially a supporter of Trump” on border policy.
But his thinking soured in light of domestic crackdowns and the impact on the local workforce.
“Now he has changed everything,” he said.
A report by the Caminos Institute estimates that the Trump administration’s immigration policies have cost the region $180.6 million in economic activity, including construction and restaurants.
Other voters saw Trump’s approach as inciting bigotry. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lower court order that prohibited immigration officials from considering “apparent race or ethnicity” and language spoken when patrolling. Human rights groups say the decision effectively legalizes racial profiling.
In Texas, state law also allows local authorities to stop individuals suspected of entering the country illegally.
“I see a lot of discrimination happening,” said George Castorena, a 46-year-old Education Department employee, who said he was voting for change.
To be sure, midterm elections can only bring about incremental change on issues as deep-seated as immigration enforcement and border policy.
At best, Democratic control of the House would serve as a bulwark against the Trump administration enacting more immigration enforcement funding and policies, while opening the door to scrutiny of the administration’s approach.
Control of the Senate could be determined by a race between Texas Republican Ken Paxton and Democratic challenger James Talarico, potentially further increasing the party’s influence.
Meanwhile, changes to the governor’s office could eliminate Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s myriad uses of state agencies to support federal immigration enforcement. But if Democrat Gina Hinojosa pulls off an upset, she will be primarily constrained by the likely Republican-controlled state Legislature and a mountain of existing laws.
An exciting moment?
More lasting change is still far away, but there is evidence that local disillusionment runs deep.
A poll conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas found that only 34% of respondents in the region felt their community was safer due to immigration enforcement by both local and state authorities. 53% said that safety has not improved and life has become more difficult.
Meanwhile, 64% feel ICE tactics have gone too far. The numbers are roughly in line with polls showing Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido leading Republican incumbent Monica Dela Cruz and Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez leading Republican challenger Eric Flores in the Rio Grande Valley’s two congressional districts.
Republicans looked to Trump’s success in 2024 and saw the race as a strong prospect early in the election season.
“What this survey tells us is that people along the border in the Rio Grande Valley are probably not aligned with the policies they would have voted for in 2024,” Osvaldo Grimaldo, a policy strategist with the ACLU of Texas, told Al Jazeera.
Prominent community figures who support Mr. Trump’s policies also acknowledge a widespread shift in sentiment.
Eli Lara, senior pastor of the nondenominational New Life Family Church in McAllen, Texas, said local residents are disappointed in the broad scope of the government’s targeting of undocumented immigrants.
“The migration issue is more serious because we are seeing people being taken away (in their communities),” he told Al Jazeera. “I don’t like families being separated, but the fact of the matter is that choices have consequences.”
This view also applied to congregants recently deported in connection with past drug possession convictions.
“He was faithful (to the church) for a couple of years, and then the church came to get him,” Lara said. “Why? Because he had a bad criminal record in the past. God forgives me, but the government doesn’t.”
Garcia, a voter who volunteers with Hidalgo County Young Democrats, was among those who believed the current situation could revitalize the Rio Grande Valley.
She cited several recent cases that have shaken the region, including the beating of a 17-year-old by an immigration officer in the Rio Grande Valley’s Alamo town and the July 2026 shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE in Houston, Texas.
“A lot of people have said to me, ‘Why am I interested in politics? Politics doesn’t affect me,'” she says. “And through these ICE raids, they understand that politics affects them. It’s unfortunate that it took a lot of trauma to really get that across to people.”
