Starr County, Texas, voted majority Republican this month – for the first time in 100 years.
Home to some 75,000 residents in about 1,200 square miles, it has a relatively small footprint, in a state where everything is glorified for its greatness.
But it made an outsized impression in national politics. Even after its historic century-long transition from blue to red, it continued to make headlines.
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham stands in front of a new section of the state-funded border wall at a site donated to the incoming Trump administration for detention centers, near Rio Grande City, Texas, November 26, 2024 .
Gabriel V. Cardenas/Reuters
Last week, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered 1,402 acres of Starr County to facilitate President-elect Donald Trump’s mass eviction plans.
In a letter to Trump on November 19, Buckingham said she was offering the land, located along the Mexican border, “for use to construct deportation facilities.”
It has also proposed alternative uses, including as a site for detention centers.
“Now it’s basically farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention center there – a place to hold while we get these criminals out of our country ” Buckingham said in a recent interview with Fox. News.
The land, which Buckingham declared state property in 2023, adds to another parcel previously owned by the Texas General Land Office, bringing the southern border acreage it controls in Starr County to 4,000.
ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal visited Starr County to ask residents what issues and values most influenced them to vote for Republican candidates this year, instead of maintaining their century-long blue streak.
“I think the economy is driving everyone crazy,” said Becky Garza, owner of Texas Cafe in Rio Grande City, the largest city in Starr County.
She explained that before, she complained about buying a box of eggs for $10, and now they cost $20.
“If things don’t improve, I may have to either reduce staff, or reduce hours, or I’ll start by reducing hours, and then from there I’ll work, maybe reduce, maybe be reducing the menu, you know, to keep the place open, you know, because I don’t want to lose my customers,” Garza said.
And she doesn’t think she’s the only one making these kinds of tough decisions, she told ABC News.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent discusses the lay of the land along the Rio Grande in Starr County, Texas, as part of the federal appeal at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sgt. Mark Otte/Military Department of Texas via AP
Jaime Escobar, mayor of neighboring Roma, another town in Starr County, agrees. He suggested that residents are more influenced by the local economy than what is said in Washington, DC.
“We no longer want to be seen as just a poor community because we are culturally rich,” he told ABC News. “We are proud of our Mexican-American heritage, but we no longer want to rely solely on the government.”
But with DC invited into their backyard, it’s bound to bring the topic of migration and deportation to the forefront – even for those who may not have prioritized this issue during the election cycle.
Asked how people might react to a detention center in neighboring Starr County, Escobar said: “People don’t want families to be torn apart. That’s the last thing we want.”
“But at the same time,” he added, “we hope that Trump and his administration will do the right thing and focus on the criminal element first and then see how, in the meantime, we’ll see how policies can be implemented in a better way.
Participants in the annual Christmas parade on December 1, 2023, in Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas, where the majority of residents are of Mexican descent and the primary language spoken is Spanish.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Buckingham, for his part, believes that “people who live on the border really feel abandoned by these open border policies.”
She told ABC News: “They feel like this is directly harming their communities and their security and their prosperity.”
In the same interview this week with ABC News, Buckingham also said she would “absolutely” deliver even more of Texas, as she did for Starr County.
“I own 13 million acres. If any of them can be helpful in this process, we’ll be happy to have that discussion,” Buckingham said.
In an aerial view, the ongoing construction site of a state-sponsored border wall where Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham held a news conference, Nov. 26, 2024, in La Casita-Garciasville, Texas.
Michael González/Getty Images
Trump said he would carry out his plans for mass expulsions – a major promise of his campaign – by declaring a national emergency and using “military means” to expel migrants currently living in the United States without legal authorization.
He backed up his pledge by choosing several immigration hardliners to join his administration, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security and the former director of Immigration and Customs, Tom Homan, as “border czar”. Both choices require Senate confirmation.
But with an estimated 11 million people estimated to live in the United States without legal immigration status, these promises have raised questions of both feasibility and cost.
Removing them could cost billions of dollars a year, according to estimates by the American Immigration Council.
And while Republican-leaning areas of Texas might feel obligated to support the effort, other southern border states, like Arizona and California, have already expressed disinterest.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live last week that she would not use state police or the National Guard to assist in a mass eviction.
“We will not participate in misguided efforts that harm our communities,” she said.
