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BROWNSVILLE — A line of about 100 people snaked along the side of the city’s event center just before 9 a.m. in late October.
Miguel Torres and his former co-worker, Diego Galvan, arrived at 6:30 a.m. to secure their spot at the front of the line. Inside were representatives from more than 20 different employers, including SpaceX, NextDecade — the energy company building a natural gas liquefaction facility in Brownsville — local restaurants, law enforcement agencies, and institutes of higher education.
Both men wanted welding jobs at SpaceX. They had reason to be hopeful: The spaceflight company is expected to hire hundreds of people in South Texas as it prepares for the next generation of its Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster.
Torres, a 32-year-old Brownsville resident, is unemployed. He and Galvan were among the thousands of employees across Texas to be laid off from Southwest Key Programs, a nonprofit organization that ran shelters for unaccompanied migrant children.
The organization, which was subject to a federal investigation launched by the Biden administration, closed after Trump officials announced the federal government would stop placing migrant children in its shelters.
Torres was a case manager at the Brownsville shelter. He didn’t like his job, but it paid well, he said.
“I’m not an immigrant, but I was taking care of immigrant children,” Torres said. “Now that there’s no immigrant kids coming here, I’m out of a job.”
Torres’ life looks markedly different from a year ago, when voters in the Rio Grande Valley helped elect President Donald Trump to his second term. His story, and others’, are a reminder of how an election can change lives in big and small ways.
The Valley — overwhelmingly Hispanic and poor — was thrust into the national spotlight after the election. The politically curious wanted to know what inspired voters here who have long supported Democrats to make such an abrupt change. Was it the economy? The border? Faith? All of the above.
Today, residents are navigating a world that is much like the one before the 2024 election. And yet, actions by the Trump administration have posed challenges. Economic data from the Federal Reserve in Dallas show an economy in flux. Both employment and unemployment have risen since the start of the year. Construction sites face delays, and restaurants are short on staff due to threats of immigration enforcement raids. Groceries remain stubbornly high. Foot traffic in downtowns from Brownsville to McAllen appears down, driven by a dramatic drop in border crossings.
The people of the borderland are adjusting. They maintain a commitment to remind the world that their home is more than a political battleground or backdrop to the immigration debate. They refuse to settle for mere survival and have found ways to push their communities forward.
“The good will affect us”
Rosa Castañeda dug out orange tablecloths from a plastic bin that had been stored away in a shed just outside her small event space. She needed to prepare for an annual autumn party, she said, for the women who regularly attended Zumba classes there.
For nearly 10 years, the Brownsville event space has hosted birthday parties, baby showers as well as the Zumba classes that Castañeda takes part in.
Life as a small business owner is different from her life as a kindergarten teacher in Matamoros, a city across the border in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
She left that life behind more than 30 years ago to be with her now-husband who was a U.S. citizen. Now 59, Castañeda is a citizen too and a mother to four adult children.
With citizenship comes the right to vote, which Castaneda views as a serious responsibility. In the last three presidential elections, she proudly voted for Trump, swayed by what she perceives as his lack of hypocrisy.
“I viewed him as being like Rosa,” she said, referring to herself, “really frank and direct.”
Trump is a regular topic of discussion among the women who attend Zumba classes at her space, oftentimes because Castañeda brings him up herself. Many of the women have become disillusioned with Trump lately and tell her they no longer support the president. When Castañeda mentioned that Trump wants to give Americans $2,000 checks as dividends from the money allegedly collected from tariffs, they questioned her, challenging her to show them where she read that.
She doesn’t shy away from the topic. She quickly and enthusiastically explains how she remains positive about Trump when asked about his second term so far.
“Everything is part of a package and one way or another, the good will affect us just as much as the bad,” she said in Spanish.
A person of faith, she uses her space to collect donations of snacks and other food for a biblical school in Matamoros. She also sees herself as a positive person and holds onto the hope that Trump will ultimately be good for immigrants and somehow establish a pathway for those who are undocumented to gain legal residency.
“We came to this place without speaking English, but we still work, we were still able to get a house,” she said. “If I can do it, why can’t everyone else?”
“Impacted by national rhetoric”
One Monday in early November, McAllen City Manager Isaac Tawil was thinking about Mexico. This isn’t uncommon for a person who runs a city that is located about 12 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. On that day, though, he was trying to re-establish a connection to the country that had been lost.
The week prior, the U.S. Department of Transportation suspended 13 airline routes by Mexican carriers that connected several U.S. cities, including McAllen, to Mexico City.
The sudden suspension of the routes was due to Mexico’s alleged noncompliance with a bilateral aviation agreement. The transportation department said Mexico had illegally canceled and frozen U.S. carrier flights for three years while adding new routes and services between Mexico and the U.S.
The move drew bipartisan pushback from the Valley’s congressional delegation and Tawil worked through the weekend to provide them with information on the impacts to the city and to discuss the issues that need to be resolved to bring those routes back online.
That day, he engaged in conversations with different airlines to see if they’d be interested in picking up the route between McAllen and Mexico City that had to be abandoned by the Mexican carrier.
It was a popular route, Tawil said, which flew with an excess of 90% passenger capacity.
“So much of the economy here is driven by our connection to Mexico,” he said. “For our businesses to be able to engage with their counterparts across the border, for our community to have direct connection by air to Mexico, and then have access to other parts of Mexico — whether that’s for recreation, vacation or business — it’s important.”
Tawil became city manager in August 2024 but he’s been with the city for about 15 years in the city attorney’s office. The city’s leader needs to be a visionary, he said, and he hopes that years from now, McAllen looks different than how it did when he inherited it.
In an address to the members of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce in October, Tawil acknowledged the concerns of local businesses that were dealing with tariffs and slowing sales.
Though sales tax revenue grew during the last fiscal year, it didn’t grow as much as it did the previous year. Wary of more disruptions, the city is forecasting no growth in its sales tax next year.
At the same time, McAllen is pushing forward on projects for the community and its commercial interest.
The city unveiled plans for a mixed-use development meant to bring luxury residential units, shops and entertainment spaces to a 63-acre space. The project has been in the works for more than three decades. The city finally announced a $230 million investment for the project, which they hope will serve as a tourist attraction and will put McAllen on the map in a way that transcends the national immigration debate.
“People’s behavior is very much impacted by the national rhetoric, but it always is,” Tawil said. “Whether it is airline flights or border issues or anything else that impacts the world economy, we have to focus on creating a solid and self-sustaining community that is, to the extent possible, shielded from that.”
“There’s literally so much”
It was 30 minutes before opening, and the baristas were prepping the coffee machine and cleaning behind the counter, all part of the daily ritual of a coffeeshop.
Industrial light bulbs hung from the ceiling over a row of tables that lined the left side of the store. Shelves lined the opposite wall, filled with books for sale. A few couches sat in the center of the store for some leisure reading.
The Caffeine Library, a hybrid coffee shop and bookstore, is only about a month old but has already been a welcome addition to the area.
Founder and owner, Jaime Montelango, began documenting the journey toward opening day with his brother on TikTok.
“It was maybe even a little overwhelming,” Montelango said of the audience they built online. “I was like, ‘maybe I shouldn’t post because we’re not ready,’ and I was really nervous.”
A 26-year-old from Palmview, Montelango decided to pursue the opening of a coffee shop after his parents encouraged him to start a business.
The idea for a bookstore and coffee shop hybrid came to mind because it was his idea of a perfect weekend. Committed to helping him pursue his dream, the family took on the business together.
Montelango has a degree in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation, he lived in San Antonio for about three years, which is where he initially wanted to open the store.
However, he found the perfect spot in Edinburg right across the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, so he moved back south to open up the store.
Getting here had its challenges. Because of tariffs on coffee, they considered many different coffee sellers and roasters to try to find a cost-effective bean that also tastes good. Eventually, they decided on a seller from San Antonio who ships beans to them weekly. And like many businesses, they had to take out multiple loans for the business.
But Montelango was heartened by the success of other local coffee shops in the area and by the public response. A series of new book clubs will host gatherings at the shop, he said.
“I think it’s really important to have that space where people with similar interests can just come together and discuss,” he said.
His shop is the first of its kind in the Valley, and he’s happy to establish something here that he’s seen in bigger cities.
“Having lived in different cities, we see a lot of people here complain that there’s not really much to do, but there’s literally so much,” he said.
“In love with this place”
Eddie Lee Marburger and his teammates sped past acres of farmland on a seven-hour bus ride from Edinburg to Nacogdoches.
Marburger, 23, is the starting quarterback for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s new football team — the Vaqueros — and they were headed to play their ninth game of their first season.
A Valley native who graduated from Sharyland Pioneer High School in Mission, Marburger left the Valley behind to play football at the University of Texas San Antonio. He returned home this year for UTRGV’s inaugural year.
“This is my home, so I thought it would be a cool opportunity to come back home and be part of history,” Marburger said.
The community response has been enthusiastic. Tickets to their first game in August sold out, a game which the team won by 66-0 in front of an audience that included U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
“The community and how they rally around the football team is pretty cool,” he said. “It’s almost like you’re like a pro-team down in the Valley, just the way people treat you.”
It helps that the team is on a hot streak, having won seven out of 10 games as of Nov. 13. But Marburger said the people of the Valley love football in a way that has flown under the radar before.
“I don’t think people understand how much people love football in the Valley,” he said.
While Valley natives know the area is more than just ground zero to immigration policies, college football presents an opportunity to bring that awareness to the rest of the nation.
Marburger, himself, has served as a sort of guide to his teammates who hail from other parts of the country. Some of them were worried the border region was dangerous, but seeing it in person, they’ve grown to love it.
“They’re literally in love with this place,” Marburger said. “They said they might stay here after football.”
Marburger hopes to extend his football career at UTRGV for another year, applying for one more year of eligibility. If that isn’t approved, he hopes to play for the National Football League.
“We literally want to teach everybody”
At a recent gathering of the Rio Grande Delta Fellowship in Brownsville, a dozen people held tattoo machines in their hands. They practiced using it on fake skin.
The class was the latest in a series of free offerings that Martin Cuevas had helped organize.
Cuevas had made good money working as a paralegal, but it wasn’t fulfilling.
Hoping to forge a new path for himself, he enrolled in a local leadership program called the Frontera Leadership Institute. The 12-week course instilled in participants entrepreneurial and product management skills, and it was during his time there that he knew his calling was to give back to the community.
He launched the Fellowship, a nonprofit, at the outset of summer to provide free classes to the public on anything that people want to learn.
The leadership institute inspired him to fill the knowledge gaps within the community by teaching them how to file their taxes or imparting other business skills that aren’t taught in schools. So far, the group has held courses related to business and art. Cuevas hopes to hold medical courses in the future.
He also plans to hold discussions on LGBTQ+ issues to make up for the lack of education on those fronts, given how colleges and universities are shying away from teaching certain topics under the Trump administration.
“We literally want to teach everybody in the community everything we can,” he said.
In his eyes, helping each other learn even small skills can build a stronger community.
“The support that we build here, this sort of little bubble that we’re in, that’s really important,” he said. “That helps build everything that we have now here and I just want to help make it a healthy ecosystem.”
“We have a lot of serious issues”
On Halloween, there were no spooky decorations outside of Roel Perez’s home, and his hands were empty of candy to hand out to the neighborhood children. His arms, instead, carried blankets and a few other personal items that he packed into his silver Mazda.
All were things he intended to take with him when he made the drive to Houston the next morning for a new job with the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health.
At 60 years old, he was starting anew after he was laid off from his job with UTHealth’s regional campus in Brownsville. He had worked there for 10 years for Salud y Vida, a free diabetes management program that caters to residents without insurance or those on Medicaid or Medicare.
Perez was among the first social workers added to the program. He visited patients at home to understand what prevented them from accessing health care and to connect them with resources they needed.
But then he and seven others were notified in September that they would be laid off due to cuts to grant funding. He began looking for job opportunities in the Valley, which had been his home his entire life, but he didn’t hear back from any employers in the area.
An opportunity to stay in the place he was raised, in the home he owned, and near the friends he had made, didn’t appear, so he accepted the job in Houston.
He’s not very worried about himself, though. His concerns are with the remaining staff who he fears will be overburdened and the community who he worries won’t get the help they need, which worries him the most, he said. He managed 80 people who participated in the program and they will have to be divided up among the remaining staff members.
“They’re going to have less services, less contact with employees,” he said.
Perez comes from a family of 10 boys and three girls who were raised in Elsa. Most of them are spread out all across the country, though three of them remain in the region. His two daughters, both in their 20s, live in Portland.
He and his siblings were migrant farm workers, spending summers picking fruits and vegetables in Maine and Michigan. They were underdogs, he said. His parents benefited from public education, food stamps and Medicaid so he knew he wanted to pursue a career that benefited families like his.
He’s been a social worker for about 32 years, spending the last 10 years with the diabetes program.
“Offering those social services was really helpful to a lot of families, and helped them get their diabetes under control,” Perez said. “I was always impressed with the mission of improving the health of the community, because I know our community … we have a lot of serious issues.”
The work and his background also motivated him to be politically active by participating in anti-border wall protests and volunteering with Democratic campaigns. He hopes to find similar volunteer opportunities in Houston.
Despite his deep ties and despite his desire to stay put, Perez pulled out of his driveway the next morning before the sun rose and drove north, off to settle into a new home.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
Disclosure: UTHealth School of Public Health, University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.