Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

US army soldiers patrol the US-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas, on 24 January 2025. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.

Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.