Big Beat

The proposed merger of three University of Texas campuses in the Rio Grande Valley has far-reaching financial implications. You should be rooting for the Texas Legislature to pass a bill that would combine the campuses of the University of Texas-Brownsville, University of Texas-Pan American and the Regional Academic Health Center in Harlingen, operated by the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. The new institution would provide educational opportunities to a long underserved region at a time when ignoring the need for higher education in the Valley could soon burden the state’s economy.

The stakes for Texas’ economy are high. Steve Murdock, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau and ex-state demographer, has estimated that undereducated Hispanics could cost Texas $11.4 billion annually in lost tax revenue by 2050. Alternatively, closing the earning gap between Anglos and minorities, he said, could, by 2050, increase average annual household income in Texas by $16,000. The solution: better education for Texas’ minority population. The Rio Grande Valley, where roughly 90 percent of the residents are Hispanic, is the place to start. As UT-Pan Am President Robert S. Nelsen told the Observer in March, “If we don’t get it right in South Texas, we don’t get it right in this nation and we especially don’t get it right in this state.”

Hispanics now comprise a majority of the kids in Texas public schools, and Nelsen says they make up 89 percent of the student body at UT-Pan Am.

Still, only 4.6 percent of all Texas Hispanics were enrolled in college in 2011, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. That’s compared to 7 percent of African-Americans and 5.6 percent of Anglos.

That could soon change. The bill to create a premier university in the Valley won unanimous support from the Texas House and easily passed the Senate but hasn’t yet won final passage.

The new institution would remain part of the University of Texas system and would become eligible for funds from a public endowment called the Permanent University Fund. The new university could also access the $50 million Institute for Transformational Learning, a part of the University of Texas System that bills itself as “promoting innovation” and funds online learning programs throughout the UT System.

Nelsen says that technology is a big part of the merged university’s future. “We’ve thought a lot about virtual classrooms. We’re doing more and more online and hybrid classes because of the great demand.” Online courses can be especially beneficial for working students or students who have children.

This year the school added masters of business administration and masters of public administration programs to four others already online, and the school has plans to do the same next year for special education and nursing programs.

The merger brings with it the plan to create a long-sought medical school at the Harlingen campus. “If you look at what happened at the UT Health Center San Antonio,” Nelsen said, “in 22 years, it generated over $18 billion in economic impact. Just creating a $98 million science building will have a $134 million impact. It will bring 125 extra jobs to the Valley.” That’s welcome news, because one downside to the merger is the loss of some jobs at the merging schools. UT-Brownsville recently notified about 250 employees that they no longer will have a job come August.

The newly formed university will also get access to a University of Texas funding program that provides allotments to attract top teaching talent.

All of which could lead the new university to become an emerging research facility. “I think this merger is an economic engine for the Valley and for the state,” Nelsen told me. It’s a long-overdue investment in higher education in one of the state’s most ignored areas—and hopefully will provide Texas an economic boost. If the bill passes, the merged university would be a win for the Valley and potentially a win for the rest of the state too.

In many parts of the U.S., when the subject of Mexico arises, calls for more border security, higher walls and stricter immigration laws quickly follow. But in Brownsville, Texas, the ties that bind two nations together have been celebrated for 76 years during the annual Charro Days Fiesta. I grew up in Brownsville and have been attending Charro Days—named for the Mexican cowboy with the wide-brimmed hat—since the early 1970s. My parents and grandparents, likewise, attended from the time they were young. But with U.S.-Mexico relations riven by American immigration enforcement and Mexican narco-violence, I went home to see how traditions have changed.

Just days before this year’s Charro Days, the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros issued a travel warning for the border region of the state of Tamaulipas, following a spate of carjackings.

But I found that the border spirit—neither fully American nor fully Mexican but something altogether unique—lives on.

Cindy Casares

Consider one of my favorite floats in Saturday’s parade: a flatbed truck carrying a group of uniformed Customs and Border Protection agents playing conjunto music. I saw them at last year’s Sombrero Festival where they brought the house down. The irony of a bunch of Hispanic guys in CBP uniforms playing Tex-Mex music to a cheering Hispanic crowd is not lost on me. It’s also not unusual in the Rio Grande Valley where Texas and Mexico meld into one.

Locals continue to keep Charro Days a bi-national celebration as best they can. In the early days, the bridges to Mexico remained opened so that citizens of both countries could freely share the events happening on both sides—street dances in Brownsville, rodeos in Matamoros, parades in both cities.

Those days are gone, but this year the mayors of Brownsville and Matamoros still met midway on the Gateway International Bridge for the traditional Hands Across the Border ceremony. The mayors exchanged gifts and hugged while schoolchildren from both countries did the same. Wearing a fringed leather jacket with white filigree—a traditional costume from the state of Tamaulipas—Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez recalled the importance of this symbolic gesture.

“We are more than neighbors, we are family,” he said to the crowd in English, while Matamoros Mayor Alfonso Sanchez Garza described the ceremony in Spanish as “a hymn to the friendship the two cities share.”

Cindy Casares

In the 1960s, a small group of Chamber of Commerce leaders in Brownsville created the Mr. Amigo Association to honor Mexican celebrities who work toward furthering U.S.-Mexico relations. Over the years, a number of famous Mexican entertainers—both male and female—and one former Mexican president have been crowned Mr. Amigo. This year’s title-holder, a telenovela star named Eduardo Yañez, drew throngs of adoring female fans to Charro Days festivities, especially the three Brownsville parades that took place Thursday through Saturday.

Saturday’s parade also featured fifteen entries that made the trek from Matamoros to appear in the event. Thirty years ago, that number would have easily been much higher, but tightened security and immigration measures have changed things, Charro Days Association President Henry LeVrier says. For years, the Grand International Parade started in Brownsville and continued on to Matamoros to join that city’s Fiestas Mexicanas, but that all changed about four years ago due to concerns over firefights in Matamoros between Mexican military and cartel members.

Cindy Casares

These days, after the parades families are more likely to head to the Sombrero Festival —a 27 year-old fair held in Brownsville’s Washington Park with live music, food booths and Mexican-themed competitions like the “Grito Contest,” (a grito is a Mexican victory cry), and the ever-popular “Frijolympics,” (a bean cook-off).

A bevvy of souvenir shops from the Matamoros mercado have also come over to the Brownsville side now that Brownsvillians are afraid to travel to Matamoros to buy their Charro Days costumes.

As Mayor Martinez said at last year’s Hands Across the Border event, “Our two cities will always be one family. No matter the forces that try to pull us apart.”

LeVrier agrees, telling me, “We continue meeting throughout the year with organizers in Matamoros to keep the spirit going.”

Neither prefabricated walls nor the threat of narco-violence can destroy that and I suspect, when this current political climate is relegated to the history books, Charro Days will still be going strong.

A fascinating video is circulating on the Internet featuring motorists who decline to answer questions at Border Patrol checkpoints miles from the border. Questions like, “Are you a U.S. citizen?” or “Where are you headed?” are met with polite refusals. In the video, one pair of motorists stopped at a Laredo checkpoint refuse to answer an agent’s question about their citizenship. When the agent becomes agitated and orders the driver to pull over to secondary inspection, the driver politely says, “No thank you.” The agent calls over his supervisor. “Unless we’re living in a police state,” the driver says. “Unless this is Mexico or Nazi Germany … this is still America and I can travel down this road without having to answer questions from federal agents.” The kicker is the motorists get away with it; the supervisor ultimately waves them through.

This was a surprise to me because I grew up in the Rio Grande Valley where travelers must pass through an internal checkpoint in Sarita or Falfurrias to reach points north. The Border Patrol operates a total of 71 permanent and tactical checkpoints on the southwest border, according to a 2008 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. (Tactical checkpoints do not have permanent buildings. They support permanent checkpoints by monitoring and inspecting traffic on secondary roads that the Border Patrol determines are likely to be used by undocumented travelers or smugglers.) As the checkpoints have proliferated, so has concern over the rights of motorists. Critics of the internal checkpoints say they violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Still, it was unclear to me if you are legally obligated to answer Border Patrol agents’ questions. What, exactly, are your rights and responsibilities at these checkpoints? I put the question to a few legal experts.

Denise Gilman, co-director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, says that Border Patrol agents at internal checkpoints are allowed to ask motorists basic questions about citizenship, identity and travel itinerary, but they cannot detain you or search your vehicle without probable cause. Your refusal to answer questions would not provide probable cause to allow for such a detention or search, she added.

“So, if you refuse to answer, they can pull you out of the line and over into ‘secondary inspection’ and they can probably hold you there for about 20 minutes or so,” she said. “But they cannot do anything more if you continue to refuse to respond unless something else develops during that time period that would lead to probable cause.”

More than one motorist in the video declined to pull over into secondary inspection, yet they were allowed to go on their way without incident.

“I don’t know of any case where the person has refused to go into secondary inspection as in the YouTube video,” says Barbara Hines, a clinical professor of law at UT who co-directs the immigration clinic with Gilman. “But it is a very interesting civil disobedience idea. Because in order to arrest the person, the Border Patrol, again, would need probable cause.”

I happened to have a trip planned to the Valley last weekend. On my way back to Austin, I stopped at the checkpoint in Sarita. Rather than refuse to answer the question, “Are you a U.S. citizen?” I asked the agent whether or not I was legally obligated to answer. She was taken aback at first, asking if I was going to pull a camera on her. I told her I was doing a story for the Texas Observer, which probably ensured that I would get out of there without a hassle.

Her supervisor referred me to the Border Patrol Public Affairs Office in Falfurrias and I went on my way never having revealed my citizenship.

By email later, a Border Patrol spokesman gave me the answer I was looking for: “Although motorists are not legally required to answer the questions ‘are you a U.S. citizen and where are you headed,’ they will not be allowed to proceed until the inspecting agent is satisfied that the occupants of vehicles traveling through the checkpoint are legally present in the U.S.”

Border Patrol agents are granted authority to question the occupants of vehicles traveling through an established checkpoint based on U.S. vs. Martinez-Fuerte. That was a 1976 Supreme Court decision that said permanent or fixed checkpoints set up by the U.S. Border patrol on public highways leading to or away from the Mexican border are not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Congress also gave the Department of Homeland Security authority, through the Immigration and Nationality Act, to conduct searches within a “reasonable distance” of the border, which DHS defines as 100 miles.

Hines points out, however, that federal laws and regulations are subordinate to the Constitution.

So it seems you are within your rights not to answer the Border Patrol agent at an internal checkpoint (this doesn’t go for actual borders!), but the agents are also within their rights to ask you about your citizenship. At least for a while. After that, they’d need probable cause to detain you.