South Texas Fights Back

In October, masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement simultaneously raided six ropa usada businesses, or used clothing warehouses, across McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. The agency detained hundreds of people, according to media and witnesses. ICE never disclosed how many people it detained.

The raids marked a turning point for the region’s Mexican American community, according to Dani Marrero Hi, deputy director of La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), an immigrant rights organization based in the Rio Grande Valley.

“The sheer number of people that they arrested, including U.S. citizens and people who were in the process of getting their documentation, struck us,” Marrero said. “There were family members who were saying, ‘Hey, our dad is a U.S. citizen.’ But the agents took them anyway,” she said. “It’s activated people here to say, ‘We have to do something.’” LUPE credits the ropa usada raids as the spark that ignited their “Valle Fuerte, Valle Libre” project, which has mobilized volunteers across the region to deliver thousands of information kits—covering civil liberties and constitutional rights—door-to-door in their neighborhoods.

Soon after the raids, judges began dismissing the charges. In February, U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled that prosecutors had accused people of crimes they had never committed, dismissing visa fraud charges against 16 people swept up in the ICE dragnet.

Abuses by Border Patrol and ICE have been rampant for decades in the Rio Grande Valley, and they have long been normalized. Both agencies have heavily recruited Latino border residents, who often see these jobs as one of the few avenues to a middle-class income.

“It’s making a lot of people in our community reflect on culturally what we have accepted for so long,” Marrero said. “Many people are, because of these incidents, saying, ‘These are things that I’m no longer OK with. I’m no longer OK with this pipeline of [ICE and Border Patrol] recruiting young boys and girls in high school or middle school. That we just think, ‘Oh, why do you see Border Patrol and ICE trucks all the time? They’re just part of our culture here,’ and we see them in such an unassuming way. And yet, look, they killed someone at our beach, and we didn’t find out until a year later because the government wouldn’t release information on it.”

Marrero was referring to Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen from San Antonio, who was fatally shot by an ICE Homeland Security Investigations agent in March 2025 during a trip to South Padre Island with friends. The agency never publicly revealed its killing of Martinez. Instead, Newsweek uncovered the story almost 11 months later thanks to FOIA documents released by American Oversight, a nonprofit ethics watchdog.

Denisse Carreon, who has previously worked in politics, including as field director for Democratic U.S. representative Vicente Gonzalez’s 2022 reelection campaign, is now public relations director at We the People RGV, a grassroots activist group that describes itself as a “pro-Democrat” but “candidate neutral,” and as prioritizing “the community” over party affiliations. Carreon said incidents like the ropa usada raids and the killing of Martinez are increasingly uniting a bipartisan coalition of people in the region who oppose the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

In another case that has roiled the Rio Grande Valley, Carreon helped organize a protest outside the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville last weekend, demanding the release of a detained McAllen family. In 2023, the Gámez-Cuéllar family entered the U.S. as asylum seekers through President Biden’s CBP One program. On February 25 they were detained after a routine check-in with immigration officials.

Two of the family’s sons, Caleb, 14, and Antonio, 18, are award-winning members of the well-known McHi Mariachi Oro ensemble at McAllen High School, and Joshua, 12, who is the youngest, is also an acclaimed mariachi student. The two younger brothers and their parents were sent to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, 230 miles north of McAllen, while their older brother, 18-year-old Antonio, was detained in the nearby El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville.

“This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. So morally, this is wrong,” Carreon said. “I feel like we’re moving, mobilizing both parties. At the end of the day, we don’t care who gets the family out—if it’s Republican, if it’s Democrats. Everybody needs to protect the Brown community under every administration. Our community is always the one targeted.”

Carreon said she organized the Raymondville demonstration with organizations and individuals from both the Republican and Democratic parties joining a press release issued by We the People RGV along with the Carnalismo Brown Berets Rio Grande Valley chapter, asking for the family’s release.

Republicans who signed the press release included Sarah Sagredo-Hammond, who ran in the 2026 Republican primary for Texas House District 41, and Gary Groves, a precinct chair for the Hidalgo County Republican Party and self-described MAGA Republican known locally for organizing Trump Train rallies.

“Community leaders are urging members of the Rio Grande Valley congressional delegation— U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar—to intervene and advocate for the family’s release while their asylum case proceeds,” the press release stated.

“People are scared. I put myself in their shoes,” Carreon said. “That you can do everything right and you’re still going to be detained—that creates fear. Fear in the community of showing up to court. But regarding that, everybody is uniting from both political sides. It’s going to give us hope. Hope that things will get better.”

The Gámez-Cuéllar family was released Monday after intense public pressure spurred local congressional representatives to act. A person with direct knowledge of the effort said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, were key in the family’s release. Rep. De La Cruz, R-McAllen, arranged a press conference to highlight 18-year-old Antonio’s release in Raymondville. Endorsed by President Trump, De La Cruz is one of only two Republicans to be elected to congress from the Rio Grande Valley after the congressional district was redrawn by Texas Republican leaders.

“This day should not be about politics,” De La Cruz said from behind a podium outside the Raymondville detention center, as protesters’ cries of “justicia para todos!” echoed in the background. “What this day is about is commonsense enforcement policies.”

De La Cruz called for a way forward that includes some of the very policies that put the Gámez-Cuéllar family in ICE detention in the first place. “I challenge my colleagues to work together for new enforcement policies that not only secure our border but make safer communities ...,” she said, adding, “These two things do not have to be in contradiction.”

Carreon said De La Cruz’s statements on the Gámez-Cuéllar case highlight that while some local Republicans may be crossing party lines to oppose aggressive immigration enforcement, much of it may be performative, given that elections are around the corner.

De La Cruz has both voted for more ICE funding and sought work authorization for some migrant workers. This is the first time, however, that she has publicly sought the release of anyone from ICE custody.

“We know [De La Cruz] doesn’t believe in that,” Carreon said. “They’re going to cater to us because everybody wants our votes. But we need immigration reform. It’s long overdue. Every administration tells us they’re going to do it, and they never do it. So here we are with no DACA, with nothing. Literally with nothing.”