In the Trump administration’s war on immigrants—adults and children alike—South Texas is a nexus.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested 33,583 people in the San Antonio and Harlingen areas of responsibility between Trump’s first day in office and March 10 of this year, according to the agency’s data. In Minneapolis, three ICE agents who shot people have a Rio Grande Valley connection. The Department of Homeland Security plans to put hundreds of miles of buoys in the Rio Grande, 17 of those miles being in the Valley, to allegedly stop people from attempting to cross. Texas’ only licensed Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi court interpreter was detained in Harlingen’s airport in March, which also happens to be where ICE flies many of its deportees out of the United States.
