Border Patrol and Texas Troopers Were Once the Best of Friends. What Happened?
For almost three years, Texas DPS agents worked hand in hand with the feds, but their partnership has unraveled into a bitter standoff in Eagle Pass.
The Herrera family first arrived in Texas over two hundred years ago, when it was the Mexican state of Tejas. Jack Herrera, however, was born and raised in California, and he hopes you won’t hold that against him. Before starting as a senior editor at Texas Monthly in January 2022, he covered immigration and human rights as a contributing editor for Politico Magazine. At Texas Monthly, he covers Latino issues, immigration, elections, and assorted bad news. Herrera was a 2020 Ida B. Wells fellow with Type Investigations, and his work has appeared in the Guardian, the New Republic, the Nation, and elsewhere.
For almost three years, Texas DPS agents worked hand in hand with the feds, but their partnership has unraveled into a bitter standoff in Eagle Pass.
By Jack Herrera
Many border residents no longer visit their home country, which may help explain the region’s rightward political shift.
By Jack Herrera
Hint: if one of them were Baker Mayfield, he could pass a football to the folks on either side of him.
By Jack Herrera
After the latest bloodbaths in Allen and Cleveland, the governor turned to a familiar playbook of deflection.
By Jack Herrera
The administration’s new border policy has slowed the flow of asylum seekers, while frustrating those who are trying to follow the rules.
By Jack Herrera
The recent kidnapping of four U.S. citizens in the Mexican border city appears to mark the end of a period of relative peace.
By Jack Herrera
A bill would require that detention centers house kids based on the sex listed on their birth certificates, contradicting federal guidelines.
By Jack Herrera
The Biden administration has replaced key elements of our 50-year-old asylum system with “CBP One,” a smartphone application. It looks like the future—but potentially a dystopian one.
By Jack Herrera
Why has the governor lasered in on teenagers doing donuts and causing a ruckus in the capital city?
By Jack Herrera
A handful of bills target gender-affirming medical care. Some families have fled the state and others are ready to follow.
By Jack Herrera
Governor Greg Abbott’s scheme to transport asylum seekers to Democrat-run cities has been called a cynical PR stunt. It is—but if tweaked, it could be a good idea.
By Jack Herrera
Texas’s elite police agency has evolved from a frontier organization to one famed for its expert interrogators. But some high-profile cases have tarnished that reputation.
By Jack Herrera
The president’s brief trip to the Texas border city Sunday inflamed critics of his immigration policies on both the left and right.
By Jack Herrera
The looming disaster has thrown both Governor Abbott’s and President Biden’s failed border policies into sharp relief.
By Jack Herrera
As Texas Rangers’ 2023 bicentennial approaches, debates around the Rangers’ legacy become urgent again.
By Jack Herrera
How does the Texas Rangers’ legacy as frontier lawmen affect the men and women who wear the badge today?
By Jack Herrera and Michael Hall
The Texas Rangers face a reckoning at the Capitol—and go on to become pop-culture heroes.
By Jack Herrera
The Mexican Revolution gave the Texas Rangers a new calling. But it also became the darkest chapter in Rangers history.
By Jack Herrera
The historic partnership became pop-culture lore, but Texas’s broken promises to the tribe illustrated a different reality.
By Jack Herrera
From Enchanted Rock to Fort Parker to the Guadalupe Mountains, we trace three early Ranger legends that mean very different things depending on whose history you claim as your own.
By Jack Herrera
On the first episode of ‘White Hats,’ we visit the museum that tells the Rangers’ official history, then drive to South Texas to hear about efforts to bring other perspectives into the mainstream.
By Jack Herrera
Coming November 15, a tale of the Texas Rangers . . . and a battle for the soul of Texas.
By Jack Herrera
Living in a taco-obsessed world and reporting on border issues makes senior editor Jack Herrera’s relationship with the dish complex—and a little frustrating.
By Jack Herrera
Twenty months after the former president left office, those who carried out his administration’s cruelest policy are still in place.
By Jack Herrera
The region has long been characterized as adamantly opposed to abortion rights. But the reality is more complicated. And times are changing.
By Jack Herrera
Even when Bush was a complete political newcomer, Burka could see his potential to change Texas and usher in a yet-to-end Republican dynasty.
By Jack Herrera
Thursday’s decision won’t stop the border crisis or the kinds of deaths we saw on Monday.
By Jack Herrera
Border crossers are perishing in trucks, in the Rio Grande, in falls from border walls, and in remote locations. And neither Greg Abbott nor Joe Biden has a serious solution.
By Jack Herrera
Victories by Mayra Flores and Michelle Vallejo illustrate the complex crosscurrents at work as the Tejano vote grows and splinters.
By Jack Herrera
Mayra Flores won a special election to serve as the first Republican in the U.S. House from the Rio Grande Valley since 1871.
By Jack Herrera
The nine-term U.S. congressman from Laredo first came to power after a bitterly contested recount that led some to call the election stolen.
By Jack Herrera
Customs and Border Protection is a ubiquitous presence in many Texas communities, and agents are often first responders.
By Jack Herrera
Jessica Cisneros’s challenge from the left animated some national Democrats against the nine-term congressman.
By Jack Herrera
U.S. House candidate Jessica Cisneros predicts it will, but most national Democratic leaders are standing behind the incumbent, Henry Cuellar.
By Jack Herrera
Kevin McCarthy’s trip to Eagle Pass laid bare the bipartisan bankruptcy of U.S. policy.
By Jack Herrera
Greg Abbott says yes. New polling tells a different story.
By Jack Herrera
A legal expert says the governor’s effective blockading of the border could have violated the U.S. Constitution.
By Jack Herrera
The governor’s move to bus migrants to D.C. may be an attempt to stick it to Joe Biden, but it’s playing out in ways he didn’t anticipate.
By Jack Herrera
The governor's plans to bus migrants to D.C. and ramp up vehicle inspections at ports of entry have little to do with federal immigration policy.
By Jack Herrera
By chasing an early retirement and triggering a special election, veteran Rep. Filemon Vela of Brownsville has opened up a big opportunity for Republican candidate Mayra Flores.
By Jack Herrera
Greg Curtis’s first story about Sam Corey was supposed to be a colorful human interest piece, but in some ways it was actually the beginning of a heinous murder.
By Jack Herrera
Monica De La Cruz, Mayra Flores, and Adrienne Peña-Garza, all from Hidalgo County, hope to flip congressional seats across the region.
By Jack Herrera
Trying to use March voter counts to predict results in November, as many politicos have done over the past week, is fraught.
By Jack Herrera
So far, no major backer has publicly abandoned him. But one group has suspended TV ads on his behalf, and a major paper has endorsed his primary opponent.
By Jack Herrera
The party assumes people of color will turn the state blue. But most Tejanos consider themselves white. And more are voting Republican.
By Jack Herrera