Deep in the Rio Grande Valley, Brenda Dumas and her family are adjusting to a new normal.
One family member, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the federal government, has a work permit. He has to leave from his home in Olmito, a tiny town off Highway 69 between Harlingen and Brownsville, early in the morning to head east to South Padre Island, where he works. He shows up almost two hours before his shift starts. But to go any later is to risk being pulled over by the unmarked SUVs that drive around the Laguna Madre area—the 15-square-mile coastal mini-region surrounding the eponymous salty lagoon—starting around 7 a.m., pulling over, seemingly at random, other people heading to work.
