The New Yorker:

In the Rio Grande Valley, bordering Mexico, ice raids have emptied construction sites and restaurants. Recently turned Republicans are beginning to have doubts.

By Rachel Monroe

Javier Villalobos, the mayor of McAllen, a city in the Rio Grande Valley, has noticed a change in his community in the past few weeks, after a series of ice raids across the region, which is situated in the southern tip of Texas. “You go to some subdivisions that are being constructed, and it’s empty. You go to Home Depot, and there’s nobody around there,” Villalobos told me. “It’s weird. It feels like ‘The Walking Dead.’ ”

The Valley, a longtime Democratic stronghold, has in recent years been used as evidence of Donald Trump and his maga movement’s appeal to nonwhite voters. In 2021, when Villalobos was elected, Republicans celebrated the win as a sign of good things to come. “Amazing news! McAllen, Texas is a major border town of 140,000 people. 85% Hispanic—and just elected a Republican mayor,” Steve Cortes, a former Trump adviser, posted on Twitter. “The macro realignment accelerates in South Texas, and elsewhere, as Hispanics rally to America First.” In last year’s Presidential election, Trump won every county in the Valley, including one where Hillary Clinton had beat him by forty points, in 2016. McAllen had the second-biggest shift in party share of any large city in the nation, trailing only Laredo, another Texas border community. “In the Rio Grande Valley, the Red Wave Makes Landfall,” the Texas Observer declared, calling the 2024 election a “bloodbath” and wondering whether Texas Democrats were “doomed.”

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