On the US border in Texas, Trump deportation drive galvanises midterm vote

Rio Grande Valley, Texas – Leaning over plates of tamales, pan dulce, and sugar skulls, community organisers and local residents in the border city of Brownsville remembered the dead.

This year’s Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, vigil honoured victims of state violence, including those killed in immigration enforcement and detention. Just days before the US midterm election on November ۳, the event reverberated in a region long subject to Washington, DC’s shifting political winds.

“The atmosphere here in the Rio Grande Valley when it comes to ICE detentions and the ICE raids, there’s just the overall feeling amongst folks that there’s no real due process to this,” said Mark Anthony Vasquez, a ۵۲-year-old community organiser.

“What is it that we can do to move together and build together to try to make it past this, and make that change that we seek?”

Down the block, at a bookstore panel on border and immigration policy, ۲۴-year-old Juliana Garcia raised her hand to ask advice on how to find a lawyer able to navigate the aggressively shifting policies of the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has used both an increase in physical enforcement, as well as a reinterpretation of administrative policies, to fuel its mass deportation campaign.

Garcia’s aunt, a well-known member of the community in the nearby border town of Progreso, was deported just weeks ago, after being called to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hearing. There she learned she had missed a court date related to her immigration status.

In the stress of the moment, she signed a voluntary deportation form.

“Within ۳۶ hours, she was deported,” Garcia told Al Jazeera, tucked between bookshelves. “People are waking up, and they’re remembering that politics, regardless of what branch you’re in, it’s going to impact you every day.”

Shifting dynamics

Views on immigration are complex in the Rio Grande Valley, a geographic and cultural region located in subtropical southeast Texas with about ۱.۵ million residents. That complexity has only increased in recent years as border policy and immigration enforcement have become increasingly partisan, leading, reformers say, to dramatic policy swings that prevent more sustainable solutions.

It is not difficult to find Latino – or Tejano, the local term for Texans of Latino descent – residents wary of the years preceding Trump’s return to office. After the restrictive policies of Trump’s first term, border crossings increased dramatically under US President Joe Biden, fuelled in part by the end of a COVID-era policy that made asylum seekers wait for their cases to be processed in Mexico.

Some felt the border region was left to deal with the fallout from the influx. That discontent has been credited, in part, with Trump’s success in the once-reliably Democratic region in the ۲۰۲۴ presidential election.

In Hidalgo County, home to the city of McAllen, Trump won ۵۱ percent of the vote in ۲۰۲۴, a three-point margin over Kamala Harris. In ۲۰۲۰, Biden beat Trump in the county by ۱۷ percentage points.

In neighbouring Cameron County, Trump won by about five percentage points in ۲۰۲۴, despite a ۱۳-point loss in ۲۰۲۰.

Voter Jose Arizpe, a ۴۰-year-old resident of Brownsville, assessed the two years since Trump took office as a “positive change”, with fewer asylum seekers waiting in the US for their cases to be processed.

Upon taking office, Trump declared a state of emergency at the border, staunching asylum claims in what rights groups say runs counter to US law. The US Supreme Court has since ruled that US border agents can physically block asylum seekers from reaching US soil to claim asylum.

“A lot of people claim that they support illegals and want to let them in,” said Arizpe, a regular Republican voter, “but then, I say ‘well let them in your house’. And they don’t want to do it, right?”

On border policy, “at first, I supported Trump,” said Martin Torres, a ۵۵-year-old who cast his ballot for Democrats at a public library in Brownsville as part of the state’s early voting.

But domestic enforcement, and its impact on the local workforce, soured his views.

“Now he changes everything,” he said.

A report from the Caminos Institute has estimated the region has lost $۱۸۰.۶m in economic activity due to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including in construction and restaurants.

Other voters saw Trump’s approach as fuelling bigotry. Last year, the US Supreme Court lifted a lower-court order barring immigration officials from considering “apparent race or ethnicity”, as well as language spoken, when on patrol. Rights groups say the decision effectively allows racial profiling.

In Texas, a state law also lets local officials stop individuals they suspect entered the country illegally.

“I just see a lot of discrimination going on,” said George Castorena, a ۴۶-year-old department of education worker, who said he was voting for change.

To be sure, midterm elections can only offer incremental change on an issue as entrenched as immigration enforcement and border policy.

Democratic control of the House of Representatives would at best serve as a bulwark against the Trump administration legislating more immigration enforcement funding and policy, while opening the door to investigations into the administration’s approach.

Control of the Senate, which could be determined by the contest between Texas Republican Ken Paxton and Democratic challenger James Talarico, could further increase the party’s leverage.

A change in the governor’s office, meanwhile, could end Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s myriad uses of state agencies to support federal immigration enforcement. But Democrat Gina Hinojosa, if she were to pull off an upset, would be largely constrained by a likely Republican-dominated state legislature and a mountain of pre-existing law.

A galvanising moment?

Although a more lasting transformation remains far off, evidence suggests the local dismay runs deep.

A poll conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas found that only ۳۴ percent of respondents from the area felt that immigration enforcement by both local and state officials had made their communities safer. Fifty-three percent said it made their lives harder without improving safety.

Meanwhile, ۶۴ percent felt ICE tactics have gone too far. The numbers broadly align with polls showing Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido leading Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz and Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez leading Republican challenger Eric Flores in two Rio Grande Valley congressional districts.

Republicans, eyeing Trump’s success in ۲۰۲۴, viewed the races as strong prospects early in the election season.

“What this survey conveys is: people along the border in the Rio Grande Valley are not in alignment with what they probably voted for back in ۲۰۲۴,” Osvaldo Grimaldo, a policy strategist at ACLU of Texas, told Al Jazeera.

Even prominent community figures who support Trump’s policies acknowledge a broader change in sentiment.

Eli Lara, the lead pastor at the non-denominational New Life Family Church in McAllen, Texas, said locals have been dismayed by the wide scope with which the administration has targeted undocumented individuals.

“The immigration issue is bigger because [the community] is seeing people being taken,” he told Al Jazeera. “I don’t like the separation of families, but here’s the thing: there are consequences for choices.”

That view held even for a congregant who had recently been deported in connection with a past drug possession conviction.

“He’s been faithful [to the church] for two, three years, but they picked him up,” Lara said. “Why? Because he had a bad criminal record in the past. God forgives, but the government doesn’t.”

Voter Garcia, who volunteers with the Hidalgo County Young Democrats, was among those who believed the current situation could galvanise the Rio Grande Valley.

She pointed to several instances that have recently shaken the region, including the assault of a ۱۷-year-old by immigration agents in the town of Alamo in the Rio Grande Valley, and the fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in July ۲۰۲۶ in the Texas city of Houston.

“I’ve had a lot of people tell me, ‘Why do I care about politics? Politics doesn’t affect me,’” she said. “And with all of these ICE raids, they realise politics does affect them, and it sucks that it took a lot of trauma to really bring that to people.”