by Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, photography by Gerardo del Valle, ProPublica

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DEL RIO, Texas — In 2008, Joe Frank Martinez beat a Republican incumbent to become the first Latino elected sheriff along this 110-mile stretch of border. Nearly 16 years later, in mid-September, Martinez stood in front of several dozen voters at the San Felipe Lions Club, having to campaign harder than ever before, and on an issue that wasn’t a factor in his previous elections: immigration.

The 68-year-old Democrat had been in law enforcement for nearly five decades, and save for a little more than a year when he was stationed elsewhere as a state trooper, Martinez told the audience, he’d spent them ensuring the safety of residents in Val Verde County. He had mastered politics in this place nearly three hours south of San Antonio, where residents prided themselves on voting for the person they liked best instead of a party. He’d handily won each of his elections and ran unopposed four years ago when the county tipped for Donald Trump.

Since then, it had been a tumultuous time, Martinez acknowledged to those assembled in the cafeteria-like space. They’d gone through a pandemic. They’d contended with a winter storm that had left hundreds of Texans dead. And then, he said, “We faced the Haitians.”

He didn’t explain what he meant, and he didn’t have to. The memory of nearly 20,000 primarily Haitian immigrants — the equivalent of more than half of the population in Del Rio — arriving at the border almost all at once and held under the international bridge for two weeks in September 2021 has been seared into the minds of residents here. Many feared it could happen again and questioned whether Martinez was tough enough on immigration.

Immigration is not part of Martinez’s job. But in Del Rio, like in other majority Latino border communities across the country, the issue is high on voters’ minds and is disrupting long-standing political allegiances. The barrel-chested lawman with a booming voice has experienced those disruptions firsthand. In a community where about 80% of residents are Latino, some had begun painting the Democratic sheriff as soft on immigration and falsely accused him of aiding unauthorized crossings.

Sometimes the attacks happened openly. When he pulled immigrants who had arrived at the banks of the river out of the water to keep them from drowning, Republicans accused him of helping people enter the country illegally. Some residents, including supporters, criticized Martinez on social media when they learned he would be endorsed by the Bexar County sheriff based in San Antonio who, during a speech at the Democratic National Convention, called Trump self-serving and accused the former president of making border sheriffs’ jobs harder when he killed a bipartisan border security deal earlier this year.

Other times, some of those who turned against Martinez did so without saying a word. A sign he placed at a longtime friend’s house had been replaced by one with his opponent’s slogan about “bringing order to the border.”

Standing in front of the crowd gathered at the Lions Club, Martinez shared a dizzying array of charts he’d brought along to respond to his critics. Things were in order at the border. Val Verde was seeing some of the lowest numbers of immigrants crossing in years, even lower than in neighboring counties where sheriffs had gone as far as to allow militias to operate.

As for whether the Haitian migrant episode could happen again — the question he knew was looming in people’s minds — he reminded them that it was federal authorities, not his office, who controlled border crossings.

He was as upset as they were with President Joe Biden’s response, and he’d been very public about saying as much. He hoped that when it came to the race for sheriff, they would judge him on how he’d handled the responsibilities assigned to him. How he’d served Val Verde, like his father before him, as a lawman, neighbor, husband and father; that who he was outweighed his affiliation with any party.

This time, however, he wasn’t sure the pitch would work.

“I want to try to keep my campaign at the local level,” Martinez said in an interview.

“I might be blind to the fact that it can’t be done.”

It’s long been understood that the Latino vote is neither monolithic nor reliably Democratic. Places such as Del Rio, a deeply Catholic border city whose economy depends heavily on law enforcement jobs, have always held conservative views. Republicans like former President George W. Bush won here by appealing to those views while arguing for a compassionate approach to immigration.

Until recently, the party’s far-right shift on immigration hadn’t managed to make significant inroads in border communities. Conservative assertions about the issue, particularly those that painted immigration as an “invasion,” had failed to resonate with people on the border precisely because they knew better from living there. To them, the border was a fundamental feature of their day-to-day lives and an engine of their economies, not something to be afraid of. A decade ago, the overwhelming majority of immigrants who crossed the border were from Mexico. And the majority of the Latinos living on the United States side of the border had roots in Mexico as well.

That’s changed, as have other immigration patterns at the border, and so have the attitudes of those who live here. Democratic politics have been slow to keep up — at least rhetorically — with those shifts. But Republicans have seized on them to move more voters into their camp. The state’s Republican Party no longer attempts to strike a balance on immigration. In fact, during this presidential cycle, it has gone even further by using the issue as a litmus test for whether it can turn border communities red, not just in their choices for state and federal candidates but for local ones too.

Beginning in 2014, the numbers of Central American families and unaccompanied minors arriving at the border started to increase. The sight of juveniles........

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