This article was reported and written in collaboration with States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, and Stateline, a States Newsroom outlet covering trends in state policy. Read the second part of this report here.
EAGLE PASS — From a shaded bench off Main Street, next to the city park the state of Texas seized in January for its border operations, Jessie Fuentes sometimes likes to count the number of humvees, Department of Public Safety SUVs and unmarked trucks driven by uniformed soldiers that pass him.
Often, Fuentes said, he loses count.
“You just never wanna see your community change into a militarized zone,” said Fuentes, a retired school teacher who now runs a business giving kayak and canoe tours and lessons on the Rio Grande. “It makes you feel hopeless.”
Since Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, Texas has deployed thousands of National Guard troops — along with DPS troopers — to the border. The soldiers have patrolled the riverbank with drones and guns, installed countless coils of razor wire along its banks and at least once spied on migrants using WhatsApp. More recently, they have turned to crowd control, trying to contain groups of migrants that have pushed through state barriers and shooting pepper balls to discourage crossings.
To support the operation, 18 other states have deployed roughly 2,400 troops to the Texas-Mexico border in the last two years, Major General Thomas M. Suelzer, leader of the Texas National Guard, testified during a recent state legislative committee hearing.
“In this crisis, every state is now a border state,” Suelzer said.
Texas’ unprecedented push to secure the border has defied laws and court rulings that say immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.
In many ways, Eagle Pass has become the focal point of the state’s efforts to bolster the border. Texas is building an 80-acre military base with a capacity to house more than 2,000 National Guard troops. The state also took over Shelby Park, where Main Street begins, against the city's wishes and put up a wall of shipping containers strung with razor wire along the river.
People in the city of about 30,000 have mixed feelings about being surrounded by troops. Some agree with the state’s Republican leaders that the armed forces — mostly standing at the edge of the river staring at Mexico — are needed to keep migrants from entering the country. Others see it as an unwanted invasion of their tight-knit community by the state.
Either way, they don’t have a say about what the state does in Eagle Pass, where Fuentes traces his family’s history back 240 years.
He used to launch tours from the public boat ramp in Shelby Park, but that’s been reduced to rare trips because the state has limited access to the park, he said. Where he once highlighted the beauty he grew up around, he now shows mostly out-of-town visitors the state’s installations — a floating barrier in the river aimed at preventing migrants from crossing, rows of gleaming concertina wire — and talks about how it’s affecting the river.
“To me, it's just upsetting that they're messing everything up,” he said. “This is our ecosystem. This is what brings us life.”
At the Eagle Grocery near Shelby Park, 80-year-old Benny Rodriguez, who runs the store with his wife, said he supports the National Guard.
“They mean well, they want to do a good job and we wish them the best of luck,” he said. “All we want is for Eagle Pass to continue striving, providing jobs and for everybody to make a good living.”
Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber said neither he or his 34 deputies interact much with National Guard troops. Their presence in the community benefits the town when soldiers are off duty and spend money at restaurants and stores, he said.
Still, he’d like the state to leave Shelby Park. The city can no longer host celebrations there, people can no longer relax on the riverbank and kids can no longer play soccer, he said.
“It should be given back to the city,” Schmerber said.
In and around the 47-acre park, National Guard troops stand guard at an entrance gate and walk along the riverbank where families used to fish and unwind in the open area near the water. Now the quiet along the river is sometimes broken by the roar of airboats and the occasional chopping of a helicopter’s blades as soldiers patrol by water and air.
Eagle Pass was a hot spot for migrant crossings as recently as December, when thousands of migrants entered the country through the city during record migration across the southern border. However, fewer migrants have tried entering the country through Eagle Pass since then. Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, recorded the biggest decrease in migrant encounters at the beginning of this year compared to their counterparts throughout the rest of the southwest border.
While encounters in the Del Rio sector have dropped 66% from May 2023 to May 2024, the El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, has seen a smaller 10% drop over the same period.
Earlier this year, large groups of migrants regularly gathered on the Mexican bank of the dry riverbed in El Paso, waiting for an opportunity to cut through the concertina wire and push through so they could surrender and request asylum. Following two mass rushes at one border gate this spring, state troopers arrested hundreds of migrants and charged them with misdemeanor rioting — an unusual move that is now being reviewed by local courts.
National Guard soldiers also began firing pepper balls near migrants, trying to break up groups and deter them from approaching border barriers, according to Guard leadership. Soldiers are trained not to shoot migrants with the projectiles, which contain a chemical that causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, but migrants in Ciudad Juárez say they have been hit by the munitions, which left welts and bruises.
In the hours between dusk and dawn on a recent Monday, troops flew a drone overhead looking for migrants hiding in the brush. Others patrolled on foot, looking across the river, where empty gallons of water, shoes and bras left by migrants on their way north littered the dry riverbed.
A few migrants crawled into the U.S after several men cut a hole in concertina wire with a bolt cutter. A moment later, a truck with a wailing siren appeared.
“Get back inside! Hurry up,” a National Guard soldier yelled at several dozen migrants who approached the wire.
“Go back to Venezuela,” another one yelled.
A majority of the group quickly retreated.
Uriel J. García contributed to this story.