On the US border in Texas, Trump deportation drive galvanises midterm vote

Rio Grande Valley, Texas – Leaning over plates of tamales, pan dulce, and sugar skulls, community organisers and local residents in the border city of Brownsville remembered the dead. This year’s Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, vigil honoured victims of state violence, including those killed in immigration enforcement and detention. Just days before the US midterm election on November 3, the event reverberated in a region long subject to Washington, DC’s shifting political winds. “The atmosphere here in the Rio Grande Valley when it comes to ICE detentions and the ICE raids, there’s just the overall feeling amongst folks that there’s no real due process to this,” said Mark Anthony Vasquez, a 52-year-old community organiser.