As thousands of people from all over the United States came to the Laguna Madre area this past weekend to watch SpaceX’s latest launch in South Texas, many who live in the nearest towns—Laguna Vista, Port Isabel, Laguna Heights, and South Padre Island—stayed indoors.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had been arresting several people in the area over the last few weeks, likely as part of a new federal directive from earlier this month to increase arrests to 2,000 a day across the country. The agency’s presence has led to residents making their own warning system to inform the community, many of whom are in mixed-status families, of where agents are at any given time.
Preceding many of these arrests was a car chase through the residential streets of Laguna Vista on July 14, happening the same day that the Trump administration issued a directive to ICE to temporarily halt most traffic stops, following the ICE killings of two people in Houston and Maine, according to reporting early that morning from the New York Times. The pause lasted about a day.
