Dale Lynn Carruthers had always been a Democrat. Growing up in the small, predominantly Hispanic city of Sanderson near the border in West Texas, everyone she knew belonged to the party, which had long been dominant in the region.
So when she ran for a seat on the Terrell County Commissioners Court for the first time in 2018, there was no question that she’d do so as a Democrat.
But after she became county judge in 2021, things started to change. President Joe Biden took office and promised to overturn many of Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. At the same time, residents living in Terrell County, which has a population of less than 1,000, started reporting a significant increase in the number of migrants coming through the rough terrain.
