South Texas

For Texas, the reopening will mean a return of commerce and tourism for hundreds of thousands of daily border travelers across the 28 international bridges that connect the state to its Number 1 trading partner: Mexico.

Many Haitian migrants camped in a small Texas border town are being released in the United States, two U.S. officials said, undercutting the Biden administration’s public statements that the thousands in the camp faced immediate expulsion.

"I thought the Haitians were quite scared, and I think there was probably some panic, which resulted in them trying to run around the horses," photographer Paul Ratje says.

To some, this scene represents a broken immigration system that opportunistic migrants are taking advantage of. To others, it presents an opportunity for America to once again welcome people in need from around the world.

Texas officials call it a "historic surge." Thousands of new arrivals, largely from Haiti, are straining an already overstretched system, and more are on the way.

More than 400,000 Harris County homes were without power on Tuesday morning. Galveston received about 14 inches of rain, and Houston saw about 6.5 inches. Wind speeds clocked around 45 to 50 mph in the area.

Tropical Storm Nicholas hit the Texas coast early Tuesday as a hurricane and dumped more than a foot of rain along the same area swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, drenching storm-battered Louisiana, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people and bringing the potential for life-threatening flash floods across the Deep South.

Texas state troopers investigated a crash involving an overcrowded van carrying 29 people believed to be migrants. Ten people — including the driver — were declared dead on site, and 20 survivors were seriously injured.

Land port restrictions at the Texas-Mexico border may be coming to an end in the next few weeks.

Undocumented migrants trekking on foot and packed into vehicles are heading north from the southern border in greater numbers. Some are dying along the way, and Border Patrol agents are frustrated.

Roma, a town of 10,000 people with historic buildings and boarded-up storefronts in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, is the latest epicenter of illegal crossings, where growing numbers of families and children are entering the United States to seek asylum.

Ricardo Ramos, Ramon Fuentes III and Andres Arguelles were all 45. Loving husbands. Strangers who died with the coronavirus in neighboring south Texas cities. They left behind young widows who found each other in Facebook groups and bonded over the similarities in their stories.