Brownsville is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Cameron County, located on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The city covers 145.2 sq mi (376.066 km2), and had a population of 186,738 at the 2020 census. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, it is the 139th-largest city in the United States and 18th-largest in Texas. It is part of the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan area. The city is known for its year-round subtropical climate, deep-water seaport, and Hispanic culture.
Matamoros, officially known as Heroica Matamoros, is a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and the municipal seat of the homonymous municipality. It is on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas, United States. Matamoros is the second largest city in the state of Tamaulipas. As of 2016, Matamoros had a population of 520,367. In addition, the Matamoros–Brownsville Metropolitan Area has a population of 1,387,985, making it the 4th largest metropolitan area on the Mexico–US border. Matamoros is the 39th largest city in Mexico and anchors the second largest metropolitan area in Tamaulipas.
The Missionaries of Charity is a Catholic centralised religious institute of consecrated life of Pontifical Right for women established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. As of 2023, it consisted of 5,750 members religious sisters. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "M.C.". A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor." Today, the order consists of both contemplative and active branches in several countries.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley, commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The region includes the southernmost tip of South Texas and a portion of northern Tamaulipas, Mexico. It consists of the Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, Pharr, McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, San Juan, and Rio Grande City metropolitan areas in the United States and the Matamoros, Río Bravo, and Reynosa metropolitan areas in Mexico. The area is generally bilingual in English and Spanish, with a fair amount of Spanglish due to the region's diverse history and transborder agglomerations. It is home to some of the poorest cities in the nation, as well as many unincorporated, persistent poverty communities called colonias. A large seasonal influx occurs of "winter Texans" — people who come down from the north for the winter and then return north before summer arrives.
Saint Joseph Academy, sometimes referred to as St. Joe or SJA, is a private school conducted by the Marist Brothers of the Schools. It is located in Brownsville, Texas, United States, and serves junior high and high school students of the lower Rio Grande Valley and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The school is located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.
The Mexico–United States border is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. The Mexico–U.S. border is the most frequently crossed border in the world with approximately 350 million documented crossings annually. It is the tenth-longest border between two countries in the world.
The Sanctuary movement was a religious and political campaign in the United States that began in the early 1980s to provide safe haven for Central American refugees fleeing civil conflict. The movement was a response to federal immigration policies that made obtaining asylum difficult for Central Americans.
The Diocese of Brownsville is a Latin Church diocese in southeastern Texas in the United States.
John Joseph Fitzpatrick was a Canadian-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami in Florida from 1968 to 1971 and as the third bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville in Texas from 1971 to 1991.
Daniel Ernesto Flores is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He has been the Bishop of Brownsville in Texas since December 2009. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit in Michigan from 2006 to 2009.
Matamoros–Brownsville, also known as Brownsville–Matamoros, or simply as the Borderplex, is one of the six transborder agglomerations along the Mexico–United States border. It is part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley region. The city of Matamoros is situated in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, on the south bank of the Rio Grande, while the city of Brownsville is located in the U.S. state of Texas, directly north across the bank of the Rio Grande. The Matamoros–Brownsville area is connected by four international bridges. In addition, this transnational conurbation area has a population of 1,136,995, making it the fourth-largest metropolitan area on the Mexico-U.S. border.
Charro Days, also known as Charro Days Fiesta or Charro Days Festival, is a two-nation fiesta and an annual four-day pre-Lenten celebration held in Brownsville, Texas, United States in cooperation with Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The grito—a joyous Mexican shout—opens the festivities every year. This festival is a shared heritage celebration between the two border cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The Charro Days festivals usually have about 50,000 attendees each year. This celebration includes the Sombrero Festival as well as a parade that goes down Elizabeth St. through Historic Downtown Brownsville, TX.
Christophe Louis Yves Georges Pierre is a French prelate of the Catholic Church. He is a cardinal who has been serving as the apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to the United States since 2016. Pierre previously served as apostolic nuncio to Mexico, Uganda and Haiti.
The United States family separation policy under the Trump administration was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. In some cases, families following the legal procedure to apply for asylum at official border crossings were also separated. It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Under the policy, federal authorities separated children and infants from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails or deported, and the children were placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services. More than 5,500 children, including infants, were removed and up to 2,000 still have not been reunited as of March 2024.
Jean Carolyn Guerrero is an American investigative journalist, author, and former foreign correspondent. She is the author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, winner of the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize, and Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, published in 2020 by William Morrow. Guerrero's KPBS series America's Wall won an Emmy Award. Her essay, "My Father Says He's a 'Targeted Individual.' Maybe We All Are", was selected for The Best American Essays anthology of 2019.
La Lomita Chapel is a historic Catholic chapel in Mission, Texas. It was once an important site for the Cavalry of Christ, a group of priests who traveled long distances on horseback to minister to Catholics living on isolated ranches along the Rio Grande.
Julia Le Duc is a Mexican photo journalist based in Matamoros, the Mexican town across the border from Brownsville, Texas. She has covered the American border crisis as a correspondent for La Jornada, and her photograph of the Salvadoran father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in the water of the Rio Grande after attempting to swim over to Brownsville became world news on 24 June 2019.
The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards.
Annunciation House is a network of shelters located in El Paso, Texas. It primarily provides assistance to newly arrived migrants from Central America. Their facilities provide food, sleeping accommodation, and referrals for legal and medical support. The organization has close links to local faith communities, particularly the Catholic Church. Annunciation House has received international attention and news-coverage as a result of incidents related to the 2014 American immigration crisis, the Trump administration family separation policy, the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, and the National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States. As of January 2020, Rubén Garcia has been Director of the shelter for more than 40 years.
The state of Texas has a long history of immigration and immigration policy. The region that is now Texas was originally home to several Native American tribes. The first European immigrants arrived in the 1600s when the land was colonized by the French and the Spanish. Financial incentives created by the Mexican government brought many immigrants to Mexican Texas in the 1820s, mostly from slaveholding areas in the southern United States. This continued as significant illegal immigration to Mexico after 1830, when American migrants were banned.
