ICE Activity in the Rio Grande Valley — Regional Tracker

The Gamez-Cuellar Family: Detained at a Routine Check-In

February 25, 2026 — McAllen, TX

On February 25, the Gamez-Cuellar family arrived at a routine ICE check-in at the McAllen field office—the same kind of appointment they had kept without fail for nearly two years. They did not leave. ICE detained the entire family: parents Luis Antonio Gamez and Emma Guadalupe Cuellar, and their three sons—Antonio (18), Caleb (14), and Joshua (12).¹

The family had entered the United States legally through the CBP One app in May 2023, passed their credible fear interviews, and had been fully compliant with all ICE check-in requirements for two years. Their final immigration hearing was not scheduled until September 2026. They had done everything right.¹

Caleb and Antonio were members of McAllen High School’s Mariachi Oro, an eight-time state champion ensemble that is a point of deep pride for the school and the Valley. Their detention drew immediate attention not just from the immigrant rights community but from across the political spectrum.

“I am heartbroken by the detention of the Gamez-Cuellar family. These are good people who followed the rules and contributed to our community.”
— Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-TX), March 7, 2026²

The bipartisan condemnation was notable. Rep. De La Cruz, a Republican representing the district, publicly called the detention “heartbreaking” and urged a review. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez also spoke out. In a region where immigration enforcement is often framed as a partisan issue, the Gamez-Cuellar case crossed lines because it demonstrated that compliance offered no protection.²

Caleb, Joshua, and their parents were transferred to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley. Antonio, who had turned 18, was separated from his family and sent to the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville—an adult facility run by GEO Group.¹

Worksite Raids: Construction Industry Under Siege

The Rio Grande Valley’s construction industry has been devastated by a sustained campaign of worksite raids that began in early 2025 and has intensified through 2026. The numbers tell a stark story: more than 9,000 people have been arrested in the RGV over the past year, with worksite operations accounting for a significant share.¹³

Brownsville & South Padre Island Operations

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) conducted a worksite enforcement operation that resulted in 25 arrests at construction sites across the Brownsville and South Padre Island areas. The workers were taken from active job sites without warning.⁴ In a separate operation, 12 more workers were arrested at a South Texas worksite.⁵ At one site alone, 18 workers were picked up in a single sweep.¹³

January 20, 2026 — Builders Request Pause

On January 20, the South Texas Builders Association (STBA) held a symposium and issued a formal request for an immediate pause on worksite ICE raids, citing a 30 to 40 percent drop in construction activity across the region. Projects were stalling. Subcontractors could not find crews willing to show up. Homebuilders warned that housing starts would plummet and costs would spike, hurting the very communities the raids claimed to protect.³

The STBA reported that construction activity in the RGV had dropped 30–40% since the raids began, with projects stalling across the region as workers stayed home or fled.
— MyRGV, January 20, 2026³

Trump voters in the Valley who had supported stricter border enforcement found themselves confronting an uncomfortable reality: the workers being arrested were the same people building their homes, their schools, and their hospitals. As NBC News reported, South Texas Trump voters were “seeing red”—not at immigrants, but at the federal agents taking their neighbors and coworkers.¹³

LUPE: Organizing the Valley’s Response

January 19, 2026 — “10 Ways ICE Hit the RGV”

La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), the farmworker-founded organizing group with deep roots in the Valley, published a comprehensive report documenting ten distinct ways that ICE’s aggressive enforcement had impacted the Rio Grande Valley. The report covered worksite raids, check-in detentions, courthouse arrests, school-adjacent operations, and the chilling effect on daily life—from grocery shopping to medical appointments.⁶

LUPE launched its Valle Fuerte, Valle Libre (Strong Valley, Free Valley) campaign, a community defense initiative that combined legal know-your-rights training with visible acts of solidarity. The campaign’s most striking element was its yard signs: monarch butterflies tangled in barbed wire, placed at the locations where raids had occurred. The signs served as both memorial and warning—a visual record of enforcement mapped onto the landscape of the Valley itself.⁷

LUPE did not mince words about the nature of the worksite raids, calling them “out-and-out racism”—an assertion grounded in the pattern of which worksites were targeted (overwhelmingly Latino-majority construction crews) and which were not.

February 2025 — Abby’s Bakery, Los Fresnos

The Abby’s Bakery raid in Los Fresnos became one of the most widely covered enforcement actions in the Valley. ICE agents arrested eight workers at the small bakery in February 2025. The bakery’s owners were subsequently convicted of harboring charges. But it was the video footage—workers being led away in handcuffs from what had been a neighborhood institution—that went viral, racking up over 6 million views and becoming a symbol of what worksite enforcement looked like in practice.⁸

Dilley: Inside the South Texas Family Residential Center

The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas—located roughly 70 miles southwest of San Antonio—is the largest family detention facility in the United States. Operated by CoreCivic under a contract worth approximately $160 million per year, Dilley has a capacity of 2,400 beds. It is where the Gamez-Cuellar parents and younger children were sent, and it is where hundreds of other families from the RGV have ended up.

Conditions: “Worms in the Food, Mold on the Walls”

RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) has documented more than 700 medical complaints at Dilley since August 2025. Children have reported falling ill repeatedly. Families describe sleeping on metal bunks in overcrowded units, with inadequate access to medical care.⁹

A ProPublica investigation published on February 9, 2026, gave voice to children detained at Dilley. Their accounts were harrowing: worms found in food, mold growing on walls and in showers, guards confiscating children’s artwork, and staff eavesdropping on privileged attorney-client communications. The children described a facility designed not to care for them but to contain them.⁹

“The children draw pictures and the guards take them away. They listen when we talk to our lawyers. The food has bugs in it.”
— Detained child, age 10, as reported by ProPublica, February 9, 2026⁹

January 24, 2026 — The “Libertad” Protest

On January 24, detained families inside Dilley staged a mass protest, chanting “libertad”—freedom—in a coordinated action that was audible from outside the facility. The protest was reportedly triggered by the case of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose prolonged detention had become a rallying point among families inside the center.¹⁰

On February 1, approximately 100 people gathered outside Dilley for a vigil organized by a coalition of faith leaders and immigrant rights groups. The “Blue Butterfly Zones” concept—designated safe areas near the facility where released families could receive immediate assistance—drew both support and controversy, with local officials debating whether the zones interfered with ICE operations.¹⁰

International Detainees

Dilley’s population is not limited to families from Latin America. NBC News reported on a Russian family detained at the facility who described the experience as a “nightmare,” documenting how the center’s conditions and bureaucratic opacity affected families from across the globe who had sought asylum in the United States.¹¹

Border Patrol and Interior Enforcement

The RGV Sector of U.S. Border Patrol leads the nation in arrests so far in fiscal year 2026, a distinction the sector has held for much of the past decade. But a significant shift has occurred in the nature of those arrests: Border Patrol agents are increasingly operating far from the border itself, conducting interior enforcement operations that had traditionally been the domain of ICE.¹²

This blurring of roles has generated confusion and fear in Valley communities. Residents who understood the distinction between Border Patrol (border operations) and ICE (interior enforcement) now find that the lines have dissolved. A February 24 community meeting addressed growing fears about the expanded enforcement posture, with residents reporting that they no longer felt safe driving to work, taking their children to school, or visiting the doctor.

Schools and Churches: No Longer Safe Spaces

The rescission of the federal government’s “sensitive locations” policy—which had previously designated schools, churches, and hospitals as places where ICE would generally not conduct enforcement operations—has had immediate and tangible effects in the Rio Grande Valley.

Schools Under Investigation

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened investigations into three school districts in the state over student walkouts protesting ICE enforcement. While the specific RGV districts under investigation have not all been publicly named, the chilling effect has been felt across Valley schools. Administrators face an impossible choice: protect their students’ right to protest, or risk state retaliation. Parents face their own calculation: is it safe to send their children to school at all?

Churches: Congregants Arrested at Check-Ins

A pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Roca de Refugio (Rock of Refuge Christian Church) in the Valley reported that 12 members of the congregation have been arrested and seven deported since January 2025. The arrests have occurred not at the church itself but at ICE check-in appointments—the same kind of routine compliance appointments where the Gamez-Cuellar family was detained.¹⁴

“They come to check in like they’re supposed to, and they don’t come back. Twelve members of my church. Seven deported. These are people who were following the rules.”
— Pastor, Iglesia Cristiana Roca de Refugio¹⁴

The pattern is consistent across the Valley: people who have been compliant with immigration proceedings—attending hearings, checking in regularly, maintaining clean records—are being detained at the very appointments designed to demonstrate their compliance. The result is a collapse of trust in the system itself. When following the rules leads to detention, the incentive to follow the rules disappears—creating exactly the kind of non-compliance that enforcement agencies then use to justify more aggressive tactics.