‘Here in McAllen, that’s what we did too — we bused them or assisted them to go where they want to go.’
‘Here in McAllen, that’s what we did too — we bused them or assisted them to go where they want to go.’
I ’m down in McAllen, a border town of about 142,000 perched at the southernmost edge of Texas, for the week. This morning, I had the opportunity to sit down with Javier Villalobos, McAllen’s Republican mayor — whose election in the 85 percent Hispanic, traditionally Democratic town made national headlines last June — to chat about his perspective on the changing political headwinds in the Rio Grande Valley. (Mayoral races in McAllen are technically nonpartisan, but Villalobos is open about his Republican affiliation and served as the chairman of the Hidalgo County GOP before his run for office.)
The heavily Latino region of South Texas, once a reliably Democratic stronghold, has been the subject of significant interest for its swing toward the GOP in recent years. Villalobos’s tight, 206-vote electoral victory — 51 percent of the vote share — in McAllen’s June 2021 mayoral race was widely hailed as a sign of the shifting tide. Hidalgo County, where McAllen — the county’s biggest city — is located, is one of the deep-blue holdouts in the region: Joe Biden bested Donald Trump in Hidalgo by 17 points in the 2020 presidential election. But that, too, represents a significant shift rightward from 2016, when Hillary Clinton carried the county by a full 40.5 points.
There are a variety of explanations for this shift, ranging from an alienation from the Democratic Party’s leftward lurch on social issues to kitchen-table economic concerns. Villalobos, who is Hispanic, tends to strike a moderate tone: “I steer away from social issues,” he tells me. “I think those are just meant to divide and split people and help you raise money. So I stay away from that as much as I can.” He points to economics and immigration as the primary reasons for the embrace of the GOP in the region, although he stresses that border security and illegal immigration — rather than the legal forms of immigration that are opposed by the more immigration-hawkish wing of the GOP — are the issue. (Full disclosure: I’m sympathetic to that more immigration-skeptical cohort and have argued that Republicans don’t need to abandon a restrictionist stance on the issue to make inroads with Hispanics. But I’m also a gringo from up north, so take my opinion with a grain of salt here.)
With that being said, Villalobos says he doesn’t have a problem with Texas governor Greg Abbott’s controversial decision to bus illegal immigrants detained at the border up to deep-blue urban areas such as New York City and Washington, D.C. Here’s what he told me:
You know, I talked to [Governor Abbott] the night before, because I was a little concerned about it. But of course we discussed it, and it’s voluntary, and so what we discussed is if it’s voluntary and it’s to the general area where they want to go, I’m fine with it. Because here in McAllen, that’s what we did too — we bused them or assisted them to go where they want to go. It’s the same thing. So if it’s voluntary, I’m good with it . . . and where they want to go, usually, it’s gonna be New York or Chicago, in the Dallas area, or, you know, the bigger cities where there’s more work or higher-paying jobs.
It’s an important — and seemingly obvious — point that doesn’t get discussed enough in the brouhaha over the migrant-busing stunt. There have been media reports that Ron DeSantis, another Republican governor who has been transporting illegal immigrants to Democratic-controlled areas up north, misled migrants during the transportation process. But Abbott’s busing operation, at the very least, was sending migrants to areas where they wanted to go on the Texas taxpayer’s dime. “The free rides given to migrants to travel to sanctuary cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and now Chicago have cost the state $12.7 million so far,” the Texas Tribune reported earlier this month. “Abbott has provided voluntary trips to 8,900 migrants so far, according to his office.”
That makes the outrage directed at the Texas governor by Democratic mayors such as New York’s Eric Adams — who “threatened to take a busload of New Yorkers to Texas and campaign against Abbott’s re-election bid” as retaliation for the migrant-busing operation in August, the New York Post reported — all the more hypocritical. New York is a sanctuary city, ostensibly a reflection of its pro-immigrant values. Texas is giving them what they said they wanted. Of course, Abbott’s move was not primarily motivated by charity; it was an effort to stick it to urban progressives. In light of the hypocritical response from those progressives, I’d wager it achieved its goal.