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Judith Diaz is 37 and has never voted. But the longtime Austin resident says that will change this year when she casts a ballot for president — in the June 2 Mexican elections.

“In exercising my vote I am a part of a change in Mexico, even though I am not physically there,” Diaz said in Spanish.

Diaz, who is originally from Cuernavaca, Mexico, said that she moved to Austin to attend the Austin Learning Academy for a year, then stayed to work as a nanny. After spending almost two decades in Texas, Diaz said the first vote of her life will be for Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for Morena, the political party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Mexican presidents are limited to one six-year term so Lopéz Obrador, known as AMLO, can't run for reelection.

In 2021, more than 37 million people either born in Mexico or with Mexican heritage lived in Texas. Those with Mexican citizenship can register to vote in the upcoming Mexican elections, when voters are poised to elect the country's first female president and will decide whether to keep AMLO's party in power for the next six years.

Sheinbaum's main opponent is Xóchitl Gálvez, the candidate of the Broad Front for México, a coalition of different parties. Gálvez is known for opposing most of AMLO's reform efforts and is a strong supporter of recruiting more foreign companies to move their business operations to Mexico, and the privatization of Pemex, the state-owned energy company that is deeply in debt.

“Hopefully, whoever is elected sets a good example for the [women] who will follow,” said Lily Flores, 28, who is from Torreón, Mexico, and moved to Austin with her husband in August as he pursues a doctoral degree at the University of Texas.

Flores says she's most concerned about the high levels of violence against women in Mexico and thinks that Gálvez has a better approach to tackle this longstanding societal problem.

Several groups are helping Texas residents navigate Mexico's complicated voting system.

Diaz is a member of Women Inspired by Dreams, Goals and Action organization, known by its Spanish acronym MISMA, which helps domestic workers learn about wage theft and their rights in the workplace. They also hold community meetings, and at one of the meetings Diaz met Selene Dominguez, who helped her through the voting registration process.

Dominguez, 53, is originally from Mexico City and has lived in Austin for 23 years. She also supports Sheinbaum, and like Diaz, wants to see the current administration's social programs continue. Both women say the programs help the families of Mexicans living abroad by giving monthly government payments to those who qualify. They said that support can take economic pressure off family members abroad who send money back to Mexico.

Dominguez and Diaz also said they're voting for the candidate they believe will prioritize issues concerning the migrant community in the U.S., especially those who are undocumented or in vulnerable positions.

“We are not second or third-class citizens, however [migrants] get treated like that because we feel unimportant in Mexico and in the U.S.,” Dominguez said in Spanish.

Navigating a complicated voting system

Dominguez meets community members every Thursday at the Southeast Branch Library in Austin. Sitting at a desk in front of posters and resource flyers, she receives in person visits and phone calls from people requesting all types of help, from getting appointments at the Mexican Consulate to dealing with a lost passport. She volunteers with the nonprofit Coalition to Support Migrants in their New Advance, or CAMINA, along with her husband.

“[I do it] out of conviction and empathy and because of the interest that I have in our Mexican community, given that we can vote now, and that many still ignore that we have that right to vote from abroad,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez hopes that CAMINA can help pressure Mexican agencies to do a better job of informing Mexicans living abroad about how to vote and simplify the voting process.

The government requires citizens living abroad to have a valid voter ID, but getting one requires making an appointment at a Mexican consulate, which can be time-consuming. Then they must register to vote by mail, in person or online.

“It's really important that people exercise their citizenship, and yet the government is just making it very difficult,” said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. “Whether by inflexibility, by neglect, by maliciousness or by the fact that the system itself is overwhelmed by the need. It's an outdated voting system for those who are abroad.”

The Mexican Electoral Institute, or INE, announced recently that 39,724 people who registered to vote from abroad had their registration revoked due to discrepancies with their signatures or documents. Those people had to email the electoral institute to try to correct the errors.

When registration closed in February, about 226,000 people registered to vote from abroad, with more than 156,000 of them living in the U.S. That's a big increase from the 2018 elections, when 181,873 Mexicans registered to vote from abroad, but it's still only a little more than 1% of the roughly 12 million Mexican citizens living outside the country. From the different voting options, nearly 70% of people chose to vote online, a new option for this year's election.

Some unregistered Mexican voters in Texas will still be eligible to claim one of the 1,500 blank ballots available in person at both the Houston and Dallas consulates, but only if they have a valid voting ID.

Eduardo Velasco is one of the founders of Todos Votamos, a nonprofit focused on improving voter turnout and fighting voting misinformation among Mexicans living abroad. The group formed during a protest in front of the Austin Mexican Consulate against AMLO's electoral reform efforts, which many Mexicans saw as an attempt to weaken the electoral system by slashing the electoral institute budget and reducing its personnel.

Despite being a voting rights advocate, he said he could not convince his two adult children, who grew up in the U.S. and are also dual citizens, to register to vote in this year's Mexican elections.

“The new generations are not interested [in the Mexican elections] because they were born [in the U.S.]. This is also a generational challenge, because they grew up comfortably with U.S. democracy, they don't care about what's happening in Mexico,” said Velasco, who moved to Austin in 2006 for a UT-Austin program with the Austin Technology Incubator and decided to stay with his family because of safety concerns in Mexico.

Voting in both countries 

Eva Noyola, 48, a dual citizen originally from Mexico City, says she cares deeply about both countries and is adamant about voting in all Mexican and local U.S. elections.

“Every time there is an election, even if it's for a pair of local propositions where just 1,000 people vote, I'm going to vote, because I think it is a privilege to be able to in life,” Noyola said in Spanish. Noyola, a member of Todos Votamos who settled in Austin in 2013, works at the Texas Comptroller's Office.

Noyola said she plans to vote in both Mexico and U.S. presidential elections this year — an opportunity that dual citizens won't have again until 2036. She said that the issue she is the most concerned about in Mexico's election is the overall well-being of her family on the other side of the border, and the continuation of democracy in the country.

When it comes to elections in Texas, Noyola said she cares more about how taxpayer money is being used to improve public services, public education and infrastructure development.

Rodrigo Cruz, 52, who also moved to Austin from Mexico City, works in digital engineering and said Mexico needs to invest more in education to help new generations keep up with technology advancements in the U.S. and Canada. He said that he will vote for the candidate who he believes has the best plan to cultivate Mexican leadership and talent, to motivate Mexicans to stay and work in their home country.

“I want [a Mexico] where we all have opportunities that only depend on how much effort you put in to get ahead,” Cruz said in Spanish. “As long as you put in the work, nothing should be there to stop you.”

Disclosure: Rice University and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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In 2021, Bryan Collier, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that tablets would “fundamentally change” communication for the state's more than 100,000 prison inmates.

The devices, TDCJ officials said, would make it easier for state inmates to communicate with loved ones, reduce the amount of contraband entering prisons through physical mail and give them access to digital books and entertainment — all on a secure network.

Three years later, the devices have proliferated nationwide and even in some of Texas' county jails. Harris County Jail, the largest jail in Texas, plans to deploy tablets to all of the people they house — roughly 10,000 — by the end of the year, officials said.

The devices have undoubtedly improved communication between inmates and their families and friends.

But incarcerated individuals and their advocates say the devices are ultimately another tool to profit off of vulnerable people.

Unlike prisons, which house convicted Texas felons, the majority of people in county jails are being held pre-trial, meaning they have not yet been convicted of the crime they were arrested for. Still, the amount of time people spend in jail can be significant. In Harris County, the average length of stay is nearly 200 days.

For years, telecommunications companies have made money off of inmates by charging high rates for phone calls, in some cases up to a dollar per minute. As the federal government clamps down on inmate phone call costs, the tablets provide prison technology companies with new sources of revenue from a captive customer.

The devices, which look like iPads but do not provide access to the internet, are usually given to inmates for free and include some free materials, such as religious texts, a law library and self-help resources. To make phone calls, send electronic messages to loved ones and access entertainment through music, movies and television shows, though, incarcerated people or their loved ones incur high fees — some call it a “love tax.” Those fees vary dramatically across the state and are higher than the cost to make a phone call or send an email in the free world.

The company that reaps most of the profit from Texas' jail and prison communication is Dallas-based Securus Technologies, which holds a significant share of the nation's calling and video contracts with correctional facilities.

A spokesperson for Aventiv — the parent company for Securus Technology — said that nine jail facilities in Texas in seven counties – Harris, Dallas, Fort Bend, Hays, San Patricio, Gonzales and Fannin, use their tablets.

Advocates say that both counties and the state should make inmate phone calls free, as at least five other states have. They say taking a cut of the revenue from phone calls — as both Texas and some counties do — is unethical and that incarcerated people who can maintain relationships with family and friends are less likely to return to prison.

“Do I want inmates to be able to talk on video and via email on the tablets? Yes,” said Drew Willey, a Houston attorney who has long advocated free inmate phone calls in Harris County Jail. “I want them to be able to do it in the same way anyone in the free world can do it because communicating with your loved one is an honored constitutional right.”

The importance of connection

Michelle Ramos knows from experience that communicating with loved ones while imprisoned is important.

The 44-year-old San Antonio resident was incarcerated in Texas for more than two decades on felony robbery charges, from the age of 17 until 43. She said a close friend stuck with her throughout, putting money into her commissary account so that she could make phone calls and pay for other items she needed. Once TDCJ introduced phones to state prisons in 2009, Ramos called her friend daily.

Sometimes, she would call him to vent about an issue with an officer or roommate. Other times, Ramos needed legal help and sought an advocate. Communication also became a source of joy.

“It cheered me up on a lot of bad days,” Ramos said. “You just don't feel as alone.”

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of connecting with loved ones. This was especially true for those in jails and prison, who could no longer see family members through visitation. Amanda Hernandez, TDCJ's director of communications, said the agency began exploring tablets as a way to help inmates communicate with their families virtually.

Connecting with their families is one of the most effective ways to rehabilitate incarcerated people and reduce recidivism, research has found.

Communicating from prison and jail

Texas was the last state in the nation to allow inmates access to phones and email. A 2007 state law required TDCJ to find a company to install pay phones. The phones are typically located in day rooms and are accessible to prison inmates at varying levels of frequency, depending on their custody level.

Calls are limited to 30-minutes, and inmates can only phone adults on a pre-approved list. Except for calls made to an attorney, inmate calls are recorded and monitored for any illegal activity.

The state has also invested heavily in trying to keep cell phones out of prison because they can be used to coordinate escape or keep contact with gangs.

Phone calls from jail are not as strictly regulated. Each jail must provide “reasonable access” between the detained person and their attorney, family and friends. And jails must allow for at least two phone calls within four hours of the detained person's arrival.

In 2021, TDCJ began issuing Securus tablets to prison inmates for free. Inmates could use them to make a phone call instead of having to wait for a phone to become available.

“There's definitely more freedom with the tablets because you don't have to wait for someone to get off the phone,” Hernandez, the TDCJ spokesperson, said. “You can just call them from your tablet.”

Hernandez said most inmates have access to a tablet from 5 a.m. to midnight every day, and they can still make phone calls from pay phones in the prison. Inmates with certain disciplinary infractions lose access to the tablets. Hernandez would not elaborate on what specific behavior would result in the tablet being confiscated.

Each month, about 5.8 million calls are made through the prison inmate tablets at TDCJ, Hernandez said.

Ramos, the former TDCJ inmate, said she used her commissary funds to pay to watch movies and television sitcoms on the tablet, which helped pass the time. But, she says not all of the people she was incarcerated with could afford it.

“I feel like the tablets are another way for TDCJ to gain income,” Ramos said. “If you didn't have money, the tablet is basically useless to you.”

Phone calls on both the tablet and at the pay phones, also operated by Securus, are six cents per minute. E-stamps, which can be used to send electronic messages from the tablets that are similar to an email, cost 47 cents per stamp, Hernandez said. Music can be purchased for about $1.99 a song, and similar rates apply for sitcom episodes.

Hernandez said the tablets are also loaded with free games and motivational videos highlighting certain inmates who have taken advantage of the facility's rehabilitation programs.

“We are trying to showcase that people are changing their lives and they deserve a second chance,” Hernandez said.

Profiting off of inmates?

While recognizing the possible benefits, advocates for incarcerated individuals worry that tablets are simply the latest way to profit off of the state's most vulnerable individuals.

“It's boring and it's isolating and there is a lot of money to be made off of these very isolated people who have nothing to do,” said Wanda Bertram, communications strategist at the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that seeks to end mass incarceration. “I'm concerned with watching prison-life become more and more of a marketplace. Tablets have been a vehicle for that.”

A federal lawsuit in 2000 challenged the high phone call rates in prisons and jails, forcing the Federal Communications Commission to establish regulations that went into effect in 2014. Those regulations specifically govern out-of-state calls, but many state prisons moved to lower the costs of in-state-calls as well.

In 2018, TDCJ lowered the cost of all phone calls from 26 cents per minute to 6 cents per minute, a rate lower than the federal cap of 12 cents per minute. Some states have made phone calls free.

A new law, signed by President Joe Biden last year, expands federal authority to regulate the price of video calls and in-state calls. Those rates would apply regardless of the device being used. The Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, gives the FCC up to two years to hand down new rates on phone and video calls. The new rates have not yet been released and are expected later this year.

Those regulations will not include regulations on prison inmates' “e-messages”, though, something that advocates like Bertram believe is necessary.

Under Texas law, revenue from TDCJ phone and video calls is split between the state and the contractor. Securus receives 60 percent of funds, and 40 percent goes to the state. Most of the state's money goes to the Texas Crime Victims Fund and the remainder goes to the general revenue fund.

In 2017, more than $15 million from inmate phone calls went to the crime victims fund, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Jails in Texas have also begun deploying Securus tablets. Jails, which are regulated by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, are not governed by the state law about revenue from prison phone calls. Instead, each county can negotiate its own contract for inmate telephone services.

The Tribune obtained contracts between Securus and Dallas County, Harris County and Fort Bend County. Both Harris County and Fort Bend County receive commission from Securus. Dallas did away with the payments in 2020.

Fort Bend County has received $6.7 million from Securus since it began contracting with the company in 2016, said Melissa Elster, Fort Bend County's auditor. The majority of that money — $4.4 million – went to the Jail's Commissary Fund, which, per state law, must be used for the benefit of the people in jail, Elster said. She said the funds have been used to pay for cable television, supplies for vocational programs and hygiene kits. The rest – $2.3 million – was sent to the county's general fund and used for the sheriff department's detention budget.

Harris County's 2023 contract with Securus was hailed a win among jail advocates. On the heels of a national movement to eliminate the cost of phone calls from jail, the county agreed to a contract that gives those detained up to four free calls per week and that lowered the per-minute costs of phone calls made beyond that allotment to 2 cents per minute.

But the county still receives payments made on those phone calls from Securus — a minimum of $500,000 per year — and phone calls are not free.

“Phone calls should be free, not almost free,” said Krish Gundu, co-founder of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for jail inmates across the state.

The contract also guarantees a 10% commission on the revenue earned through inmates' purchase of premium content, which includes music priced between $1.19-$2.23, a newsstand that costs $5.99 per month, and TV shows that cost 99 cents to $2.99 per episode.

“The companies that are manufacturing and distributing this technology are hellbent on making as much money on incarcerated people and their families as possible,” Bertram said. “Tablets provide a centralized way of doing this.”

The loss of physical mail

Advocates for incarcerated individuals also say that a hidden cost of tablets is the elimination of paper correspondence. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced last September that it was moving to a digital mail platform, where all incoming physical paper mail would be scanned and uploaded to the inmate's tablet, except for legal documents and other privileged mail, which would go directly to the inmate.

Hernandez, the TDCJ spokesperson, said the agency made the change because of an increase in drug-related prison deaths.

“Basically people would soak the paper in fentanyl, K2, meth, and people would smoke the paper,” Hernandez said.

County jails have also followed suit, uploading paper mail to tablets. Advocates for those in prison and jail say the switch to digital mail has been riddled with error. Legal mail has been opened and delayed, said Molly Petchenik, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, and people miss the physical copies of letters they used to savor.

“Sometimes the legal mail accidentally gets swept up in the scanning process,” Petchenik said.

She said she knows of situations where legal mail has been opened, violating attorney-client privilege. And although the Aventiv spokesperson said privileged calls can be made on the tablet, Petchenik said she doesn't feel confident that those calls are confidential.

Others say the tablets are glitchy and can be hard to use.

“The most common thing we hear about the tablets is how they are broken or they are not working or that we pay for this and we didn't get that,” Gundu said.

A different model

In the fight to make inmate phone calls free, Dallas County is close.

The county negotiated a contract with Securus in 2020 that dramatically reduced the cost of phone calls, in part by foregoing the millions of dollars it had previously been making through its contract with Securus.

The new contract set a rate of about one cent per minute for phone calls, which at the time was one of the lowest in the country. The county gave up about $3 million in revenue in order to reach that deal.

Reaching that deal was a yearslong battle for Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who believes the county should not take money from inmates and their families.

“When you think about what our job is as a county, it's not to make money off the relatives of the accused,” Jenkins said. He added that giving inmates a connection to their families helps reduce recidivism, which in turn saves the county money that it would otherwise have to spend on housing that person.

Dallas County was able to recuperate the $3 million it lost from the Securus contract through increased tax revenue, Jenkins said. Dallas is among the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country.

Dallas County did propose a deal that would recover payment from inmates who damage their tablet, which Jenkins said hadbeen happening on occasion. The money would come from the detained person's commissary account.

“The hope is that if it's going to cost you something, you won't damage it,” Jenkins said.

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EL PASO — Dozens of people crammed into a conference room on the eastern edge of El Paso on a recent Thursday evening. Some brought signs, some wore t-shirts, others diligently wrote their feedback on notecards. But the message was resounding: Don't build a highway near our wetland.

Conservation advocates in El Paso say the Texas Department of Transportation should steer clear of the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park as it considers potential highway expansion in southeast El Paso County. TxDOT is in the early planning phase to improve mobility in the Mission Valley. A corridor study identified three possible routes to extend a highway through the area. All three routes run alongside the Rio Bosque, a 372-acre park managed by the University of Texas at El Paso and the local water utility, El Paso Water.

The idea has elicited an uproar among El Paso residents who treasure the restored wetland ecosystem at Rio Bosque. Wetlands lined the Rio Grande in El Paso before a series of engineering projects straightened the river and encased the riverbed in concrete. But beginning in the 1990s, UTEP led a group of local conservationists who revived a dried-out river bend to make the Rio Bosque park. The wetland ecosystem now attracts hundreds of bird species and local universities rely on the park for fieldwork.

Rio Bosque is one of a handful of wetlands restoration projects along the Rio Grande in Southern New Mexico and West Texas, which environmental scientists compare to a “string of pearls” that improves wildlife connectivity across the region.

Conservation advocate Jon Rezendes said a highway next to Rio Bosque would be a “death trap” for birds and flying insects. “It will functionally kill Rio Bosque,” he said.

Transportation is the second-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Texas after industry, accounting for about a third of emissions. Carbon emissions from vehicles in Texas are steadily increasing. Texas is increasing funding for highways, with the most recent budget appropriating $32.7 billion for state highway projects.

But both in Texas and nationwide, the role of highways is being re-examined. Residents have organized against highway expansions in cities like Houston and Austin, and federal transportation agencies are addressing the legacy of highways that pass through communities of color. In El Paso, TxDOT has studied the possibility of extending the Border Highway, which runs through south-central and southeast El Paso along the border wall, further east since the 1990s. But the latest iteration of the study has sparked spirited opposition from conservation advocates.

TxDOT says the area needs more road capacity. But El Pasoans are calling for alternatives that don't impact Rio Bosque and other historical and cultural sites in the area.

Jennifer Wright, a spokesperson for TxDOT's El Paso office, said that if a project comes out of the corridor study, it will take years to secure funding and go through the permitting process.

For now, she said, the concept maps are nothing more than ideas from engineers about what options would be “reasonable and feasible” to address traffic issues in the area. She said there is no “imminent threat” to Rio Bosque.

El Paso lost its wetlands — until Rio Bosque

When the city of El Paso took ownership of Rio Bosque in 1973, it was a dry patch of land overtaken by invasive saltcedar trees. But local conservationists had a vision: to restore the wetlands that once lined the banks of the Rio Grande.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seasonal floods on the Rio Grande caused widespread damage in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, its Mexican sister city. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War established the river as the international border in 1848. But the river changed course with each flood season, flummoxing officials trying to map the official boundary.

To prevent floods, improve irrigation and solidify the international boundary, the meandering Rio Grande through El Paso-Juárez was straightened and encased in concrete between the 1880s and the 1930s. “There are few river systems in the world that have experienced such massive transformation so rapidly,” wrote a group of environmental scientists in a 2023 paper.

University of Texas at Austin environmental historian C.J. Alvarez, who studies construction on the border, calls the Rio Grande through El Paso and Ciudad Juárez “more damaged, more manipulated, and more engineered” than any other section of the 1,900-mile long river.

The free-flowing Rio Grande was transformed into a channel dedicated to farm irrigation.

The bends and oxbows of the river were eliminated. The wetlands along the river's banks dried out.

The Rio Bosque land occupied one of those old, dried-out river bends.

The idea to create a wetland at Rio Bosque got off the ground in the late 1990s. UTEP's Center for Environmental Resource Management signed on to manage the site. John Sproul has served as the park's manager ever since, now with the help of assistant park manager Sergio Samaniego, a UTEP graduate.

Their biggest challenge is securing water to fill the wetlands, especially in dry years like 2023, when El Paso only received 4.34 inches of rain, about half of the average annual precipitation. El Paso Water provides treated wastewater from its nearby treatment plant. The park also gets irrigation water from the Rio Grande and relies on wells.

But the hard work is paying off and native vegetation like Rio Grande cottonwoods and Goodding's willows are now well-established. Birds have flocked to the park, which the border fence separates from the Rio Grande. Threatened species like the western yellow-billed cuckoo, which migrates from Central and South America and had not been sighted for years in El Paso, was first spotted at Rio Bosque in 2007. It's become a popular spot for birders who keep a running list online of their sightings.

“Any effort, no matter how small, to remind people what it would look like to rewild the place — to look back in time before the big engineering projects — is a good thing,” Alvarez said.

Growing pains in the Mission Valley

While the Rio Bosque wetlands was taking shape in the late 1990s, transportation planners were also eying the area. TxDOT completed a feasibility study in 1997 that laid out conceptual designs for a highway stretching 20 miles between the Zaragoza bridge — two miles north of Rio Bosque — and the border crossing at Fabens. That first study references Rio Bosque and the “proposed wetlands preserve.”

The study sat dormant for years. TxDOT revisited the study in 2013 and 2014 to create an updated Border Highway East Corridor Study. The conceptual route for the highway ran northeast of Rio Bosque. During public comments in 2013, numerous people urged TxDOT to move the highway further away from Rio Bosque.

Meanwhile, the communities around Rio Bosque were changing. Farmland was gradually being developed for housing, bringing more cars to the area's aging roads. Commercial truck traffic from Juárez into El Paso at the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge steadily increased. By 2020, there were over 587,000 truck crossings into El Paso at the bridge, up 52% from 2010.

“With the increase in population and commercial traffic and activity at the port of entry, the congestion is getting worse and worse,” said Iliana Holguin, county commissioner for Precinct 3, which includes Socorro and the Lower Valley. “We have tremendous mobility needs in that area but we also have to protect the resources that are there.”

El Paso's Mission Valley is named for the area's three original Spanish missions: Ysleta, Socorro and San Elizario. Ysleta is now within the El Paso city limits, just north of Rio Bosque, and Socorro and San Elizario are municipalities south of the park. Socorro, the area's first mission, was founded in 1682.

The valley is also El Paso's most important agricultural area, fed by the Rio Grande. It is also home to Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, one of three federally-recognized tribes in Texas. Also known as Tigua Pueblo, its members were displaced from what is now New Mexico in the 1600s and resettled on their current lands.

TxDOT's concepts also have the highway passing by the Tigua's tribal lands. The Tribal Council did not respond to a request for comment on TxDOT's corridor study.

“[Rio Bosque] is a place of prayer, a place to have peace,” said Andrea Everett, a member of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and environmental scientist. “It is the last place that actually looks like when our ancestors were displaced here in 1680.”

Everett, who studied the impacts of environmental change on the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in her graduate studies at UTEP, said that Rio Bosque is an important place for her and her family to connect with their ancestors and the riparian ecosystem that once surrounded their tribal lands.

“We're already an urban tribe but we're trying to hold on to what we have,” she said.

“A rewilding success story” 

Jon Rezendes fell in love with El Paso and its mountains while serving in the military at Fort Bliss. After leaving the military, Rezendes and his wife and children stayed in the desert city. Rezendes started taking his kids to Rio Bosque, where they would watch for birds and explore miles of dirt trails.

“Rio Bosque is a true rewilding success story,” Rezendes said, referring to the process of increasing biodiversity and restoring the natural processes of an ecosystem, including the reintroduction of native species. “For me the idea of returning the land to its natural state in any way we can is beautiful.”

Rezendes learned about the corridor study, and as a volunteer with local conservation groups, he spread the word about TxDOT public meetings held the first week of May. He attended a meeting on May 2 wearing a Protect Rio Bosque t-shirt and said he will keep fighting until TxDOT abandons the idea.

During the public meeting, concept maps were rolled out on tables and participants voiced their opposition on sticky notes affixed to the maps: “We need public transportation,” one read. “Wouldn't the completion of a border bike system be awesome?” read another.

Wright, TxDOT's spokesperson, said public transportation is not currently included in the concepts.

UTEP declined to make Rio Bosque staff available for interviews. While TxDOT's conceptual routes do not directly cut onto the park property, two routes lay just northeast of the park and the third to the southwest of the park, between its boundaries and the border fence. The Rio Bosque newsletter for April alerted supporters to the risks if a highway is built in this buffer zone, stating that the buffer provides “an avenue for wildlife movement between the park and other areas.”

El Paso Water, which helps manage the park, came out against the three concepts from TxDOT's study, saying a highway could impact the utility's nearby wastewater treatment plant and Rio Bosque. In a statement, the utility said all three options would “pose serious environmental threats” to Rio Bosque.

Rio Bosque “is also one of the few and unique public open spaces in the Lower Valley where families can enjoy trails, go bird watching, and learn what El Paso looked like prior to modern development,” said Gilbert Trejo, the utility's vice president of operations.

TxDOT project manager Gus Sanchez said he and his colleagues heard the feedback in 2014 and moved the potential routes to go around Rio Bosque and not cross the property. Opponents say even if the highway does not cross Rio Bosque property, wildlife will be in danger and noise and light pollution would fundamentally change the park.

“We're constrained because we have Rio Bosque on the south side and neighborhoods on the north side,” Sanchez explained. “It's not like we can move it a half-mile north.”

Wright said there are models for creating wildlife crossings that TxDOT has used in other locations. She referenced crossings for ocelots in South Texas as one example. Once a specific design is completed, the project would be subject to further review, including one to ensure it complies with the National Environmental Protection Act.

“We're not interested in destroying habitat,” Wright said. “[Rio Bosque] is clearly a treasured element in our city. But we need to take a look.”

If the vigorous debate at public meetings this month is any indication, the fight for Rio Bosque is only getting started. For many in this border city, the 372-acre park is more than a place to go birding or hiking: it's a symbol of the river ecosystem that was lost and recovered and, with enough will, might be preserved for future generations.

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