EAGLE PASS, Texas — On a sweltering August night, 16 vehicles idled beside a forlorn stretch of Texas Highway 131 in Maverick County.
Located on the Mexico border, more than two hours southwest of San Antonio, Maverick is poor and rural. Census figures show nearly 90% of its 58,000 people speak Spanish at home, one of the highest percentages in the nation. In the darkness, a state trooper peered at the glowing screen of a laptop revealing contours of the landscape all around.
For nearly six hours, he and another trooper piloted drones that whirred overhead, using infrared cameras to find migrants in the brush.
