Prisonville in Southern Texas Could Soon Be Back in Business

Officials in Willacy County, Texas, a Democratic enclave in the Rio Grande Valley, are counting on President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown to revive what was its biggest employer, a prison that was mothballed after a 2015 riot, putting 400 employees out of work. The county in March deeded the facility to the company that used to operate it, which agreed to assume $69 million in outstanding debt. Now residents and officials, many with relatives on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, wait for a flood of detainees to fill the jail’s beds—and hope to find work guarding them. “It is the way it is,” says Eleazar Garcia Jr., the city manager of Raymondville, the county seat. “We have to do what we have to do for our community.”

Willacy, which is about 50 miles from the border, is the second-poorest of Texas’ 254 counties. The area’s past as a farming community is evident from the rusty silos that dot Raymondville’s skyline. Downtown, the building a Walmart once occupied sits empty. Among the survivors: a Rent-A-Center, a McDonald’s, five taquerias, two banks, a gas station, and a grocery—plus 10 churches. The unemployment rate stands at 13.2 percent—more than double the state’s 5 percent.