TAMAULIPAS, Mexico — Claudia González was living a quiet, comfortable life in Houston with her husband and their son. She worked as a data entry clerk at an elementary school and went to church every Sunday with her son.

But something always nagged at her — her immigration status.

After crossing the border illegally as a teenager to rejoin her mother, she had lived undocumented in the U.S. for 15 years until she applied for a work permit through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2018. Even though the program gives recipients temporary protection from deportation, it is not a permanent solution for immigrants who want to live in the U.S. long term.

Because her husband is a U.S. citizen — citizens can sponsor a spouse for a green card — she hired an immigration attorney and paid about $6,000 in fees to apply for permanent legal residency in 2018. For González, it meant freedom from her greatest fear, being deported and separated from her family. And it meant “being legal in a country I call home,” González said.

In June, she traveled from Houston to Ciudad Juárez, where an American consulate officer interviewed her — she had to do this in Mexico because she didn’t have a legal entry into the U.S. But in August, five years after initially applying for her green card, she was hit with a 10-year ban from reentering the U.S.

“It was really hard to receive that message; I was heartbroken,” she said. “I thought about my son. He just started high school, so my thought was that he’ll be 24 by the time I can return and he probably already will have graduated college.”

González, 36, returned to the village where she grew up to live with her mother, Guadalupe González, 50 miles from the Texas border and near the Gulf of Mexico.

Like many undocumented people trying to legalize their immigration status — an estimated 11 million people live in the U.S. without legal status — González had to navigate a bureaucratic and expensive immigration system.

In her mind, it was a chance to correct the mistakes of the past, when her mother asked her to get in a car with strangers who drove her across the Rio Grande and helped her talk her way past U.S. immigration agents. She was 15 at the time.

But the current system can be fickle and unforgiving even for those who want to do it the right way. And unlike the criminal justice system, there is no way to appeal the 10-year ban, and immigration officials don’t have to provide the evidence they have to support their decision.

“It’s not fair and it’s not logical. it's not something that anyone should go through if they want to get legal status in the U.S.,” said Naimeh Salem, an immigration attorney in Houston who recently took González’s case. “If they have never committed a crime in the U.S., they pay their taxes, they're good citizens. Why can’t we make it possible for them to become permanent residents?”

Guadalupe González, her 66-year-old mother, said it weighs on her now, the situation she put her daughter in. She said she did it because she hoped her daughter would get a better education and have a chance at a more successful life in the U.S.

“I try to tell her positive things, and that everything has a solution, even though I too feel bad,” Guadalupe González said. “I try not to show the same emotions as her, because then we both end up crying.”

In January, Guadalupe González requested U.S. asylum after suspected drug cartel members began breaking into people’s homes; four years earlier her oldest son was kidnapped from the ranch where he worked by men the family believes were cartel members, in front of his wife and children. He hasn’t been heard from since.

Guadalupe González was allowed into the U.S. while her asylum case is pending and she moved to Bay City, 80 miles southwest of Houston.

Back in Houston, 15-year-old Gerardo Garza, Jr. is about to complete his freshman year of high school. He was born in Houston and he said he wonders why the immigration system has separated him from his mother. And if he’ll one day get to live with her again in Texas.

“I was just having a hard time accepting that she’s not with me,” he said. “I was in my head like: ‘Why? Why is the government like this? Why can’t it be simpler than it is now?’

Top: Claudia González left her 15-year-old son with his father in Houston while she lives in Mexico and tries to find a legal way to return to her family. Bottom left: González plays lotería with family after church in Tamaulipas. Bottom right: Bottle caps on lotería cards. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

In October, Salem filed a request for humanitarian parole, which would allow Claudia González to reenter the U.S. and resubmit her green card application. The request remains pending with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Salem said there were better options for González, who as a DACA recipient could have applied for permission to travel to Mexico, then legally reenter the U.S. That would have allowed her to stay in the U.S. as she applied for her green card without having to go to Juárez.

González said she didn’t take that route because her previous lawyer advised against it. She said she trusted him. But now she regrets not pushing for that option.

“I feel so ignorant now. I should have done more research,” González said.

Now, three generations of the González family are separated as Claudia tries to find a way to reunite with her son in Houston and her mother awaits a decision on her asylum petition.

Life in Tamaulipas

For the past nine months, Claudia González has lived in a remote village where she grew up before leaving for Texas. She lives with her godmother, whose house is next door to her mother’s house.

It’s secluded, surrounded by undeveloped land, some farms and a few ranches — including the one where her missing brother worked. There is a convenience store, a taco restaurant and an evangelical church within a few minutes’ walk of the house. There’s a nearby school and a small plaza that stays mostly empty unless there’s a major celebration.

There's' very little work; many locals depend on money sent home by relatives working on the other side of the border.

The area is also a hot spot for drug cartel activity. Neighbors and González said at night, unmarked vehicles patrol the area — they suspect cartel members keeping an eye out for rival cartel members. It’s common to hear gunfire in the middle of the night, González said.

For a few months, starting in December, she worked at a local stationery store, but quit after receiving a phone call from a man who González said was threatening to shut down the store if it didn’t pay certain “fees.”

“That scared me and gave me a panic attack,” González said.

Claudia González visits a store near her home in Tamaulipas, roughly 50 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Claudia González visits with her neighbors in her Tamaulipas village. Her older brother was kidnapped from a nearby ranch in 2020 and is presumed dead. González and her neighbors say it’s common to hear gunfire at night. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Before being forced to move to Mexico, she had some money saved. She recently filed her U.S. taxes and received a refund. Once that money dries up, she doesn’t know what she will do, she said.

She spends most of her time researching ways to return legally. She’s contacted the office of a member of Congress in Houston asking for help. She also goes to church and plays lotería, a board game similar to bingo, with an aunt who lives in the same village.

On a Sunday afternoon in September, González wore a green dress and carried a Bible with a black leather cover as she walked the dirt road to the local evangelical church.

The pastor, Estela Prieto Covarrubias, 71, invited congregants to the podium to share a Bible verse or sing. González went to the front to read from Psalm 139. She told the congregation – about 40 people — that the verse helped her fight through her depression, especially after she was hit with the decade-long ban from the U.S.

“Sometimes I feel like I lost a lot of things,” she said through tears. “I lost my job, I am far from my son, but God is the one who has sustained me by his grace and with his mercy."

The congregation applauded. Some shouted: Amen!

Covarrubias said she was impressed by González’s perseverance.

“I believe her testimony is impactful. She doesn’t look devastated,” Covarrubias said after her sermon. “Instead, you see her with an infectious smile, because she has faith in God who is going to open the door for her and put the right people in place to be able to fix her situation and return home with her son.”

Crossing the border

In 1998, Guadalupe González, then a single mom after separating from her ex-husband, who she said was physically abusive, got a tourist visa and began crossing the border to work in McAllen. She would leave Claudia with her sister and her brother-in-law, who had two children of their own. Her ex-husband took Claudia’s older sister and brother to Dallas.

On the weekends Guadalupe González would return to the village to visit Claudia, then relatives would drop her at the border on Sunday afternoons so she could return to work in Texas.

“I needed to pay for [Claudia’s] education and to feed her, that’s why I left,” she said.

When work slowed in McAllen, she said she headed north to Bay City and picked cotton for a few weeks before moving to Houston, where she worked at different restaurants before she started to clean houses in 1999. She would work two months at a time, then return to Mexico for a week at a time.

But the trips were tiring and time-consuming. So in 2003, she sent for Claudia. Her two older children, then 20 and 23 years old, had returned to Mexico and decided to stay.

An aunt dropped off Claudia González at the Texas-Mexico border where a coyote — a human smuggler — put her in a vehicle with a couple who drove her across the border. González said she remembers being in the car with the couple and two other children. She didn’t speak to the U.S. agent at the bridge and doesn’t remember what the adults told the agent about her, but she remembers the agent waving them through.

Guadalupe González, who remarried in 2005, said she didn’t know at the time how that car trip would affect her daughter’s future. She just wanted to be with Claudia in the U.S. and give her a shot at a good education.

“I thought as long as she didn’t cross the desert or get detained, everything would be fine,” she said.

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Pastor Estela Prieto Covarrubias leads the worship at her church in Tamaulipas on Sept. 17, 2023. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Claudia González sings at the church. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Building a life in Houston

At Ross Sterling High School in 2005, Claudia González met the boy she would marry. They sat at the same table in the cafeteria with mutual friends. She remembers him “acting like a clown to make me laugh.”

They began to date. Then she started attending an evangelical church with his family, she said. At first, it was just to spend more time with him, but eventually, she became a born-again Christian, leaving behind the Catholic traditions she grew up with.

When she was 17, Claudia González moved in with her boyfriend’s family. Her stepfather was physically and emotionally abusive toward her mother and she wanted to leave that environment, she said. She dropped out of high school, but earned her general educational development degree.

In 2009, the couple had a son, Gerardo Garza. Jr.

Meanwhile, Guadalupe González had separated from her second husband, and in 2011 she returned to Tamaulipas to take care of her father, who was battling pancreatic cancer. Her visa had expired, and there was no guarantee that U.S. officials would renew it, so she went back knowing she would likely not be able to return to Houston.

She took care of her father for 11 months before he died.

“I’m happy I was able to take care of him in his last days,” she said.

Interview in Ciudad Juárez

Claudia González stayed in Houston and built a life. She and her partner got married in 2013. She successfully applied for DACA in 2018, which allowed her to work legally in the U.S.

DACA also allowed her to get a Social Security number, pay taxes and get a Texas driver’s license.

She delivered food for DoorDash. She worked as a cashier at a Subway. Then she found a job she loved at an elementary school, as a data entry clerk. Her coworkers and the teachers soon came to depend on her to act as an interpreter for the Spanish-speaking parents of some of the students.

“I always wanted to make a difference and help people that don't speak English,” she said. “My English is not perfect, you know, but I always tried to help them.”

Every Sunday morning, González and her son would go to church, then head to Olive Garden and share a plate of chicken fettuccine alfredo before ending the afternoon shopping for clothes at Goodwill.

“Those were our mommy-son dates,” she said.

Top: Claudia González speaks with church members after Sunday service. Bottom left: González and her mother, Guadalupe González, prepare breakfast at their home. Bottom right: González holds her chick, Mushito. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

She was able to renew her work permit four times, paying $495 in fees each time. But she knew that if she wanted to be secure, she needed a green card. Her husband, who was born in Mexico and became a naturalized citizen, sponsored her.

She began the application process in 2019.

Back in Mexico, tragedy struck in April 2020. Claudia’s older brother, José Fabian, was kidnapped by suspected drug cartel members from the ranch where he lived with his wife and two children. He is presumed dead, but Guadalupe González clings to the hope that he is still alive. The family said they don’t know why he was targeted, but the rumor around town is that he was friends with someone who was involved with the local drug cartel.

“Sometimes I tell my daughter that she at least has a chance to see her son,” Guadalupe González said. “But what about mine? I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

After her brother disappeared, Claudia González wanted to return to Mexico to stay with her mother for a while. She asked her lawyer to apply for what’s known as advance parole, which would have allowed her to leave the U.S. temporarily and return legally as a DACA recipient. Her lawyer told her it was too risky, she said, so she dropped the idea.

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, her application seemed to be stalled in the immigration system bureaucracy. Finally last year, she received an appointment with an American consulate official in Ciudad Juárez.

Her lawyer at the time assured her everything would be fine and advised her to answer the questions honestly, without elaborating too much, she said.

In June, she traveled to Juárez with her son and met her mother and older sister there. They lived in a hotel for two weeks while she did two interviews with the same officer.

She told the officer how she entered the U.S. — by crossing an international bridge with a couple. She said the officer insisted on knowing who brought her into the country and how. González said she didn’t know the people who drove her across the bridge or what documents they presented on her behalf.

After the interviews were done she went to her mother’s home in Tamaulipas to wait for the decision.

On Aug. 28, 2023, González received an email from the U.S. State Department.

She said her heart dropped and tears started to roll down her cheeks when she read it: She was denied a visa and banned from entering the U.S. for a decade because she had lived in the U.S. for more than a year without legal status. They also accused her of lying to the consulate officer and claiming to be a U.S. citizen when she wasn’t.

Her aunt dropped the towels she had just folded and immediately embraced González.

González called her lawyer.

The lawyer told her that he wrote in her paperwork that she immigrated alone, González said. But she told the officer she crossed the border with strangers. She said she believes this discrepancy is what led to her being accused of lying. She insists that she never told U.S. officials that she was a citizen.

“God knows I never said that,” she said. Then her lawyer dropped her.

“He told me that this was out of his expertise and he couldn’t help me and wished me well,” she said.

Top left: Claudia González shares her story on a live stream with members of the Dreamers 2gether group. Top right: Guadalupe González holds a photo of her son, who hasn’t been heard from since he was kidnapped in 2020. Bottom: From left: Claudia González, her mother Guadalupe González, and her sister Ma Guadalupe González at their home in Tamaulipas. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Longing for his mother

Gerardo Garza, Jr. is a high school freshman now, living with his father in the south part of Houston. He plays viola in the school orchestra. Since he was separated from his mother, he texts and calls her often, sharing details about his day, his troubles with his now ex-girlfriend and how he has emotionally broken down at school.

The last time he saw his mother was in April, to celebrate his 15th birthday. His father drove him to the Texas-Mexico border, where Claudia picked him up and took him to the village. She had decorated an event hall with black, gold and red balloons and a neon sign that read, “mis quince” — my 15th.

Dressed in a brown button-down shirt, blue denim jeans and brown boots, Garza posed for a photo next to his mother in front of the balloons as music blared through the room.

They ate carne asada tacos.

“I felt at home, I knew everyone there loved me,” Garza said. “I knew it wasn’t much, but I knew my mom still tried to make it big.”

But when it was time to go home, he felt a punch in his gut, he said. His father picked him up at the bridge on the Mexican side. Garza said his father said something silly that made his mother smile.

Garza and his mother hugged, he said, as both held back tears. On the drive to Houston, he said he thought about his mother’s smile and his eyes started to water.

He put his sunglasses on, he said, so his dad wouldn’t notice he was crying.

He said he misses her a lot and reminisces often about the days they would spend together, especially those Sunday mornings when they would go to church and eat fettuccine alfredo at Olive Garden.

“I always smile and laugh when I remember those good times,” Garza said.

He’s had to learn how to take care of himself most of the time because his father works long hours as a welder.

He said he didn’t realize how much the household depended on his mother. She paid all the bills. She took him to school in the mornings. When his father can’t give him a ride to school he orders an Uber. Or a neighbor takes him.

There was a day recently when he missed his mother so much that he went into her closet and cried.

“My mom is really a good person and I don't think that she deserves any of this, or that we deserve any of this,” he said.

Disclosure: DoorDash has been a financial supporter 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.

EL PASO — Before Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia received a demand from the Texas Attorney General’s office to hand over sensitive documents about the migrants who have stayed at his shelter, the state had been monitoring Garcia’s and other staffers’ activity.

In court documents, Anthony Carter, a criminal investigator with Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, described Garcia dropping off groceries in a white Toyota truck and noted “several Hispanic individuals from adults to small children seen entering and leaving” one of the El Paso shelter network’s facilities. Carter noted that only three people had keys to the shelter, while everyone else had to ring a doorbell.

Rob Farquharson, an assistant attorney general in Paxton’s office, said in the same court documents that what Carter observed showed that the shelter had an “unusually covert way” of operating. He said Annunciation House appears “to be engaged in the business of human smuggling,” operating an “illegal stash house” and encouraging immigrants to enter the country illegally because it provides education on legal services. (Garcia’s lawyer said that’s just how migrant shelters operate, for the safety of guests and staff).

“When we first read it, we thought it was creepy,” said Jerome Wesevich, a lawyer with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who is representing Annunciation House in its legal fight with Paxton. “I don’t know if I would call it spying, but if they would have just asked us, we would have talked to them.”

Earlier this month, Paxton’s office sent lawyers to Annunciation House, seeking records about the shelter’s clients and gave Garcia a day to turn over the documents. When Wesevich said that wasn’t enough time and asked a judge to determine which documents shelter officials are legally allowed to release, the AG’s office interpreted the delay as noncompliance and filed a countersuit to shut down the shelter network.

For the past few years, right-wing advocacy groups and Republican lawmakers have targeted non-governmental organizations that shelter migrants, many of them asylum seekers, blaming them for incentivizing illegal immigration with taxpayer money.

Those efforts come as religious figures, emboldened by the rise of Christian nationalism, continue to demonize migrants and those who aid them as part of a broader scheme to dilute the American electorate. On Sunday, Ed Young, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the longtime pastor of Houston's massive Second Baptist Church, gave a lengthy sermon in which he reportedly called migrants "garbage" and "undesirables" who are being brought in to support a "progressive, Godless" dictatorship.

"We will not be able to stand under all the garbage and raff in which we're now inviting to come into our shores," said Young, whose church has been attended for years by prominent state Republicans. "And they're already here."

Far-right Catholics have also mobilized against organizations such as Catholic Charities, calling it the "enemy of the people" and blasting it for assisting migrants — many of whom are also Catholic, but conflict with the ethno-nationalism that experts say is highly correlated with white Christian nationalist beliefs.

Last year, right-wing Catholics launched a campaign to defund bishops who aid migrants at the border; and in an interview with the group Church Militant, self-professed Christian nationalist and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, said Catholic Charities’ work was proof of “Satan controlling the church.”

And some Texas politicians have targeted faith-based groups like Annunciation House — which has been in operation for nearly 50 years — with accusations that such shelters encourage, and profit from, illegal immigration.

Paxton’s move comes as immigration has become one of the main issues in this year’s presidential elections and Texas has dramatically ramped up its efforts to deter people crossing the Rio Grande.

Last year, Garcia expressed concern that Gov. Greg Abbott’s escalating efforts to halt illegal immigration could impact the work of Good Samaritans.

“The church is at risk because the volunteers are asking themselves, ‘If I feed someone who’s unprocessed, if I give someone a blanket who’s unprocessed, if I help them get off the street, am I liable to be prosecuted for that?’” Garcia said during a public meeting with U.S. senators visiting El Paso. “Shame on us, that on this day, this is even being brought up in the United States.”

On Friday, Garcia said Paxton’s move is the first time a state official has actually taken action to stop the work he and his staff have done to help migrants. He said that he is “concerned about the language that is used” by some politicians to describe the work his organization and others are doing with migrants because it can “encourage people to do terrible things to organizations and to people who are trying to provide basic human services to individuals.”

A 2017 court ruling reinforced the idea that migrant shelters can’t be charged with crimes related to helping migrants. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued Texas in 2016 over House Bill 11, a state law with a provision that says people commit a crime if they “encourage or induce a person to enter or remain in this country in violation of federal law by concealing, harboring, or shielding that person from detection.”

The following year the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the state’s favor but said organizations that provide services to immigrants aren’t at risk of prosecution under the law, “Because there is no reasonable interpretation by which merely renting housing or providing social services to an illegal alien constitutes harboring . . . that person from detection.”

Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in court documents at the time that his agency “would not investigate, file criminal charges, or otherwise engage in enforcement activity” under this state law against non-governmental organizations that provide aid to migrants.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said Paxton’s move is “absolutely terrifying and should send a chill down the back” of people who care about immigrants’ rights and the groups that help them. She said that “extreme far-right members” in Congress have worked to defund organizations that help migrants.

“This is a wake up call for the country that this far-right extremism knows no bounds. And I assure you that what has happened to Annunciation House will be a pattern that will be executed on every nonprofit, every local government, every organization that offers care to anyone who might be undocumented, or someone who is an immigrant and an asylum seeker in this country.”

Two years ago, U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, sent Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley and two similar faith-based organizations a lengthy demand for information about migrants and the services they provide to them — not unlike the demand Paxton’s office sent to Annunciation House.

He threatened the organizations with congressional subpoenas if they didn’t comply, but two years later, Gooden said Catholic Charities has not responded to his demand.

“They know that what they're doing is so politically disgusting to the average American that the outrage would really increase if they cooperated with any oversight investigation by Congress,” Gooden said of Catholic Charities.

Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in McAllen, said the alarmist rhetoric Gooden and others are spreading about the border and her work is politically motivated.

“I wish they would come and actually see what we're doing so they can understand what is actually happening at the border,” Pimentel said. “We respond to what our own faith calls us to do, to take care of our brothers and sisters who are hurting, who are suffering.”

In a May 2023 letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas, Gooden wrote that NGOs receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars through federal grants to provide lodging and transportation for migrants “to be released anywhere they want in the United States.” Gooden added that groups like Catholic Charities stood to financially benefit from more illegal crossings because then the federal government would provide more money to fund their facilities and services.

Pimentel disputed this characterization. She said in addition to helping house and feed migrants, Catholic Charities also serves families in four counties in the Rio Grande Valley.

Gooden’s scrutiny of Catholic Charities came at the same time as right-wing groups, like the Deposit of Faith Coalition and Alliance for a Safe Texas, were also targeting the faith-based group. The Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of conservative Catholic organizations critical of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ stance on a number of issues from immigration to climate change, has labeled Catholic Charities an “enemy of the people,” and accused the organization of profiting off the federal assistance they use to provide shelter and food to those in need.

Pimentel said those are false accusations “based on just political rhetoric … to create a problem or a crisis so that the [Biden] administration looks bad.”

Last week, after Paxton’s investigation into Annunciation House became public, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops released a statement “expressing solidarity with ministry volunteers and people of faith who seek only to serve vulnerable migrants as our nation and state continue to pursue failed migration and border security policies.”

On Monday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement of support for Texas Catholics and other people of faith helping to “meet migrants’ basic human needs.”

Garcia said that he wants people to recognize that what’s at stake is the well-being of human beings.

“That should cause all of us to pause, take a step back and to ask ourselves, ‘How do we behave?” he said. “How do we respond when human beings are involved?”

Robert Downen contributed to this story.

FBI agents disrupted a plot by three men – two of whom said they were part of a militia – to travel to the Texas-Mexico border to kill Border Patrol agents and immigrants crossing illegally because they believed the country was being invaded, according to court documents filed in federal courts.

One of the men also called and left a phone message to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to alert him about their plans, saying: “If y'all cannot take care of this border and shut it down then we will be forced to come in and do it ourselves,” according to a criminal complaint. The complaint does not say when he left this message but that he summarized his message to a confidential FBI source on a recorded phone conversation on Oct. 3, 2022.

The men — Bryan C. Perry, 38; Jonathan S. O’Dell, 33; and Paul Faye, 55 — were arrested by FBI agents and face various federal charges in connection to their alleged plot, which authorities say they started organizing in 2022 and planned to carry out in October 2023.

The most recent arrest was of Faye of Tennessee on Monday. He faces a single charge of being in possession of an unregistered firearm silencer.

In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that Perry had “extensive contact “ with Faye before Faye was arrested. Faye “expressed a desire to travel with Perry and another individual” to the border and “commit acts of violence,” the complaint says.

Perry and O’Dell are also accused of attempting to kill seven federal agents. According to the criminal complaint, as the FBI attempted to serve a search warrant at O’Dell’s home in Missouri, Perry fired approximately 11 shots from a multicaliber rifle at FBI agents.

Perry of Tennessee and O’Dell of Missouri were arrested in late 2022 and were indicted last year by a grand jury on several charges including conspiracy to murder a federal officer, conspiracy to assault a federal officer, attempted murder of a federal officer and assault of a federal officer, according to superseding indictments filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. After their arrests, authorities found six firearms, over 20 magazines, roughly 1,770 rounds of ammunition and other equipment at O’Dell’s residence.

According to the criminal complaint, Perry and O’Dell began talking as early as November 2021 about grievances they had with the federal government. The following year they attempted to recruit other members to their militia group to travel to Washington, D.C., “to stop the madness going on,” the complaint says. It also says that they shared maps of the Capitol and other governmental buildings.

“Basically start a war”

In August of 2022, Perry and O’Dell agreed to go “to war with the border patrol,” according to the superseding indictment. Perry later told a woman he attempted to recruit on TikTok and Instagram that his “intentions are to go down there and basically start a war,” the complaint says.

“I mean, you know I know a lot of people are like, well, we don’t want violence. Well, that’s what it’s gonna take for people to open up their eyes,” Perry told an undercover federal agent over the phone, the complaint says. “I’m goin down there to hold up a rifle. You come across, you’re gonna lose your life.”

According to the criminal complaint, Perry uploaded a TikTok video announcing the group’s plan to travel to the southern border with the intent of “shoot[ing] to kill.” O’Dell indicated in the comment section that they planned to go to Texas on Oct. 2, 2022. In the video, O’Dell appears holding the buttstock of a rifle. In other TikTok videos, Perry blames U.S. Border Patrol agents and said he viewed them as treasonous for allowing migrants to cross the border.

The complaints do not say where on the Texas-Mexico border the men intended to travel. But in Faye’s criminal complaint filed Feb. 2, the FBI said he was in communication with a person from North Carolina who had previously been to Eagle Pass with a militia group called NC Patriot Party and planned to travel back to the border on Jan. 20.

Lawyers representing the three men didn’t respond to an after-business-hours email from The Texas Tribune seeking comment. Both Perry and O’Dell have pleaded not guilty.

Authorities first learned of Perry’s threats to attack the federal government after receiving an anonymous tip in September 2022, according to the complaint.

Perry and O’Dell were members of the self-styled 2nd American Militia, according to an October indictment and made plans to travel to the border to shoot federal agents who opposed them and then take the ammunition and night vision goggles from murdered agents.

At one point, prior to Perry’s arrest, he told an FBI source that he called Abbott.

“I basically told him, I said look, we’ve uh – I am a cofounder of a militia out here in Tennessee and Missouri. Um, you know we’ve-we’ve been watching the news. We know that ya’lls (sic) watched people come across the border that are trafficking drugs,” Perry said, according to the criminal complaint. “You know, it’s not acceptable anymore. If ya’ll cannot take care of this border and shut it down then we will be forced to come in and do it ourselves.”

Abbott’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

“We are being invaded”

Faye’s arrest came one day after Abbott hosted Republican governors from across the country in Eagle Pass to double down on his border security tactics, which he has claimed are necessary to defend the state from an “invasion” of migrants. On Thursday, Abbott plans to host another press conference in Eagle Pass, this time with Republican lawmakers from Texas.

In an eight-page criminal complaint, the Justice Department outlined a months-long relationship between an undercover FBI agent and Faye, which began in March 2023 on the social media platform TikTok.

In December, just over a year after Perry and O’Dell were arrested, the FBI agent and Faye discussed a plan to travel south with unregistered firearms and explosive devices to carry out a plan with militia groups from Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee “to stir up the hornet’s nest” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Faye discussed his belief that the government was training to take on its citizens, and more specifically, that the federal government was allowing illegal immigrants to enter the United States to help the government ,” the complaint read.

The complaint alleges that Faye told the undercover agent that he could gather necessary gear for their plan, like bullet-proof vests, from deceased individuals “as we go.” Additionally, Faye told undercover agents that he was already in possession of explosive targets and that he had boobytrapped his property in the event law enforcement came to his home, the complaint alleges.

In January, Faye transferred the unregistered silencer to the federal agent as they prepared to travel to the southern border, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. After Faye’s arrest, law enforcement searched his property in Cunningham, Tennessee and recovered several firearms, a silencer, explosive targets and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the release stated.

Last year, according to the complaint, Faye asked the undercover agents to train together in person before traveling to the border, saying that the “patriots are going to rise up because we are being invaded. We are being invaded.”

Abbott has repeatedly characterized the high numbers of migrants — many of whom are seeking political asylum — arriving at the Texas-Mexico border as an invasion. His campaign used the term as recently as Wednesday morning in a fundraising email. And lawyers for Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office recently tried to make a legal argument saying Texas is being invaded by “transnational cartels.” However, District Judge David Ezra dismissed Texas' argument and wrote: "Such a claim is breathtaking."

Still, Abbott and other Republican leaders in Texas and across the country have doubled down on the use of the phrase, despite demands from. immigrant rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers to stop using rhetoric that could inspire someone to commit violence against immigrants.

In August 2019, a gunman — who railed about an “Hispanic invasion” in a document published online — drove about 700 miles from Allen to El Paso and fatally killed 23 people and injured 22 others at a Walmart. According to the DOJ, the gunman has described himself as “a white nationalist, motivated to kill Hispanics because they were immigrating to the United States.”

Last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters in Eagle Pass that Texas is being invaded by “murders, molesters, terrorists, rapists, gang members, drug dealers, car jackers, kidnappers” in describing the people crossing the Texas-Mexico border. When asked by a reporter if using such language could inspire another violent attack such as the August 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, Patrick responded saying that is “a silly question.”

“Every time an elected official publicly embraces the rhetoric of the replacement and invasion conspiracy, they are contributing to a climate where someone with hate in their heart and a gun in their hand believes they should take matters into their own hands,” said Zachary Mueller, political director at America’s Voice, a progressive pro-immigration group.

Earlier in January, Abbott was heavily criticized for saying that Texas has used every tool to control the border short of ordering officers to shoot migrants.

“The only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder,” Abbott said during the Jan. 5 radio interview with Dana Loesch, a former editor at Breitbart News and spokesperson for the National Rifle Association.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, responded on social media to Abbott’s comments: “I can't believe I have to say 'murdering people is unacceptable.' @GregAbbott_TX. It’s language like yours that left 23 people dead and 22 others injured in El Paso.”