A year after a Texas border town voted for President Donald Trump, they are now starting to have some regrets that vote,
"increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics the administration has used across the country in keeping with its mass deportation agenda," The Guardian reports.
Eagle Pass, Texas became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande, where, in 2023, it became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies after a record number of migrants risking their lives to set foot on US soil.
Trump made his biggest gains in Eagle Pass's Maverick County, with 59 percent of the votes, increasing his support by 14 percent from 2020, The Guardian reports.
But as federal agents under the second Trump administration started its sweeping deportation drive, disrupting communities, arresting parents who are with their children, showing up at schools or daycare facilities, and accidentally sweeping up US citizens.
Manuel Mello III, chief of the Eagle Pass department, tells The Guardian that border crossings are part of the town's history.
“We would get between 30 to 60 emergency calls a day about migrants crossing the river with a lot of injuries, some with broken femurs or this lady who had an emergency childbirth,” Mello says.
In all 2024, the Eagle Pass fire department received over 400 emergency calls and reported eight drownings. This year, the department has responded to fewer than 100 calls and reported only three drownings, The Guardian reports.
But Mello says this isn't necessarily a good thing.
“Now Eagle Pass has gone back to normal, but this is still a broken system. Because you’re deporting people doesn’t mean that you’re fixing it,” Mello says.
"While the migration dynamics have changed at the border, some longtime residents are not just concerned about the impact on people. They’re also worried about the degradation of the environment as a result of Trump and [Texas Governor Gregg] Abbott’s crackdown," The Guardian notes.
As part of his Operation Lone Star, an ongoing, multi-agency border security initiative to deter and repel illegal immigration and combat drug and human smuggling, Abbott used a natural disaster declaration to install floating buoys separated by saw-blades in the river.
Shortly after, Jessie Fuentes, the owner of a kayaking company in Eagle Pass, filed a lawsuit, seeking to stop the installation of floating barriers, The Guardian says.
“The river was part of my grandfather’s upbringing, my father’s upbringing and mine, more than 200 years of experience as a family, and now it’s been mistreated with this militarization,” said Fuentes.
“The river can’t defend itself so I sued the Texas government.”