‘Not the Same’: Residents of Del Rio Feel the Impact of the Migrant Crisis

The influx of thousands of migrants has led to squalor under a bridge, and a dispirited town beyond it.

DEL RIO, Texas — On Friday afternoon, Jose Rodriguez stood near a fence that was steps away from the Rio Grande and tried to comprehend what was happening in his small border city: a steady stream of flashing red and blue lights speeding down a side road, each vehicle bringing heavily armed officers to guard thousands of desperate migrants huddled in a shantytown near and under Del Rio’s international bridge.

There, amid a sea of crushed plastic bottles, old diapers, chicken bones and food containers, some migrants, many of them Haitian refugees, placed cardboard to use as beds. Weary children lay in the arms of their mothers and fathers.

“There was not much to Del Rio before this,” Mr. Rodriguez, a 40-year-old warehouse worker, said. “Now, it feels like the end of the world.”