Border residents wanted crossings reined in. Now Paxton and Talarico face voters wary of deportations

By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
July 23, 2026

EAGLE PASS — No border city received more Republican attention in 2024 than Eagle Pass, where Texas’ GOP leaders took over a public park and dispatched thousands of state troopers and Texas National Guard members to patrol the Rio Grande after the city became a hot spot for illegal crossings.

The visitors that year included President Donald Trump, on his way to a second term, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and dozens of other Republicans intent on making border security the election’s defining issue. It worked: Trump won Maverick County with 59% of the vote and carried other counties up and down the border.

But when James Talarico, the Democratic state representative running for U.S. Senate, visited Eagle Pass last week, the number of illegal crossings had been hovering near historic lows for months under an immigration clampdown from the Trump administration. He was there, he told hundreds gathered at a town hall, to learn about their worries and priorities.

“Usually when politicians show up to the border, they demonize, they weaponize, they grandstand for themselves,” Talarico said at the International Center for Trade. “We’re trying to do the opposite.”

As the nation reeled from two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one in Houston, Talarico and his GOP opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, headed to South Texas last week to pitch voters on early versions of their border security platforms. Talarico brought a multi-point plan he road-tested across a weeklong tour, while Paxton delivered a familiar promise to follow Trump’s agenda and put “America first.”

At both candidates’ stops, interviews with nearly two dozen voters revealed how the frustrations some border residents had with the Biden administration’s response to record crossings have evolved into alarm about the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, as they see neighbors get deported and their friends’ businesses struggle. The comments mirror public polling, which has found many Latino voters who backed Trump are growing uneasy about his immigration enforcement. One recent survey found that one in five Hispanic business owners in the state have had at least one employee deported.

Numerous residents from Del Rio to McAllen, including some Republicans, said they hope the state’s next senator can help modernize the nation’s immigration system — decried as broken by members of both parties — in Washington, despite decades of congressional gridlock on the issue.

Still, many expressed complicated feelings, in some cases displaying the GOP’s durable baseline of support in a region where U.S. Customs and Border Protection jobs are among the most common and highest paying. While Trump is being aggressive with his crackdown, some said in interviews, the circumstances under former President Joe Biden — when crossings reached record highs — were untenable.

Republican Bob Drasner, a 77-year-old who has lived in the Rio Grande Valley for some eight years after decades of coming down seasonally, said the country needs a “good filter” when it comes to immigration. It is evident the country needs skilled workers, like talented doctors and lawyers, he said as he waited for Paxton to take the stage at a rally at a McAllen brewery.

“If I have a heart condition, I don’t care what color you are,” he said.

In Del Rio, Rodolfo Garcia, 59, waited outside on a scorching afternoon with his 16-year-old daughter, Celeste, to meet Talarico, who was scheduled to visit a Mexican restaurant. He’s supporting the Austin Democrat in part because he hopes Congress can craft a better pathway to citizenship, he said.

“He’s moderate,” Garcia said, standing feet away from Talarico’s bus.

To be sure, most voters told the Tribune that economic issues and driving down everyday costs were their top priorities this election year — highlighting the shifting dynamics surrounding immigration, only two years after Republicans leveraged it to earn massive wins in the state.

Talarico’s listening event in Eagle Pass and restaurant visit in Del Rio were just two stops on a cross-border tour the state lawmaker completed last week. The day of the town hall began 175 miles away in Sanderson, where Talarico unveiled what he is branding as a “commonsense” border security plan.

The main pillars of the plan call for hiring more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, as well as leaning on surveillance technology to help detect illegal crossings and drug trafficking. Another cornerstone is opposition to a border wall proposed by the Trump administration that would slice through Big Bend National Park. Later on the tour, Talarico said “there are some parts of the border where a physical barrier makes sense” — but not in that sparsely trafficked part of West Texas.

Joining Talarico outside a motel in Sanderson was a group of local electeds who have been among the loudest voices opposing the Trump administration’s plans for the barrier through Big Bend: Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, Jeff Davis County Judge Curtis Evans — both Republicans — and Alpine Mayor Catherine Eaves, an independent.

Cleveland, whose criticism of the Biden administration established his voice as an authority from the U.S.-Mexico border, said Americans had a false sense of security that a border wall would stop all illegal crossings. Instead, he said what works effectively is a combination of barriers and technology — like Talarico’s plan. A week prior, a group trying to cross the border had been detected by a drone, which led to their apprehension in an area where there is no wall currently, the sheriff said.

“I support barriers. But I support barriers where they work. And a barrier is not gonna work here,” said Cleveland, who spent decades as a Border Patrol agent before returning to his hometown of Sanderson to become sheriff. “His plan that I’ve had the opportunity to review, I can tell you that both parties speak it, up in Washington, D.C., they both say the same thing.”

As Talarico hit the road for his border tour, Paxton’s campaign responded by attacking the lawmaker’s voting record in the Legislature on numerous bills surrounding border security. They criticized Talarico for voting against two of the state’s biggest and latest immigration laws — one, from 2023, that lets state police arrest people suspected of having entered the country illegally and another from last year that requires most sheriffs in the state to work with ICE.

Paxton allies have also circulated previous comments from Talarico about the border. Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC linked to the upper chamber’s GOP leadership, recently blasted Talarico for calling people without legal status “undocumented Americans” who “lack citizenship documentation.”

Whether the attacks will land with border voters is an open question.

Amber Diaz, a 24-year-old breast-feeding counselor in Eagle Pass, recounted how her recently naturalized stepfather was all in on Trump until he started witnessing the president’s immigration crackdown. As news spread about the ICE shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, he called her to talk about his worries.

The White House’s deportation push is certainly on the minds of South Texas residents. Rumors that ICE will partner with local Border Patrol agents frequently swirl around town, spooking people that authorities might show up at the local HEB — one of Eagle Pass’ two major grocery stores that is also frequented by thousands of Mexican nationals who cross the border with visas every day.

For his part, Paxton said his take on immigration is simple: “We need a secure border. We need to protect our country. We need to make sure that we take care of America first.” In his first rally speech since winning the GOP primary, Paxton touted the numerous times he sued to stop the Biden administration’s immigration policies and celebrated a recent endorsement from the biggest union for Border Patrol agents.

In the audience at his McAllen rally was Rocely Gomez, 40, and her 19-year-old son Mario Prado. The two, like numerous other Paxton supporters, back the president’s mass deportations and consider themselves “100% Republican.”

Gomez said her husband, who works for Border Patrol, is sleeping better with Trump back in office. She shared frustrations about how border security issues often feel confined to a binary of good or bad that oversimplifies a complex reality. Some people don’t have a husband who comes home unimaginably rattled by his day, Gomez said, like the time hers found an abandoned baby, or another where he encountered a young girl who said she had been raped while migrating north.

Gomez would like some sort of pathway to citizenship to exist, but she also wants border crossings under control.

“It’s kinda tough,” she acknowledged.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.