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PHARR — U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar stood quietly near the back of a community center. Every now and then, he would turn to pose for a photo.
It was the end of August as Cuellar watched the progressive political group, LUPE Votes, announce its endorsements for the general midterm election.
Four years ago, LUPE Votes had enthusiastically supported a progressive candidate running against Cuellar in the Democratic primary.
Then, Donald Trump was reelected and deployed his aggressive deportation agenda.
Cuellar’s policies have skewed right on many occasions, much to the ire of progressive groups in the Rio Grande Valley. But amid the backlash within the community against Trump’s crackdown on immigration, Cuellar has placed himself at the forefront of resistance to those policies through his engagement with activist and industry groups in the region.
Since 2025, Cuellar has coordinated conversations between the construction industry and the Department of Homeland Security over immigration raids. He’s managed conversations between ICE leadership and faith leaders regarding immigration arrests. And he’s held at least one tour of the sites of proposed border wall construction to hear feedback from environmentalists about their concerns — assuring them that he’s trying to protect those areas from border wall construction.
In doing so, Cuellar has made inroads with progressive organizers in South Texas, a region where voters are signaling a desire for a change from their usual moderate representatives, where both Democrats and Republicans are fighting to win over Hispanic voters, and where the outcome of races could determine which party controls Congress.
His actions were enough to win a tepid endorsement from the group as well as other progressives in the region.
“We might not agree on everything, but I think we can agree on a lot of things,” Cuellar said.
A divisive endorsement
LUPE Votes has not been shy about its opposition to Cuellar on various issues. The organization has issued statements condemning his votes and protested outside his office for what they perceived as anti-immigrant positions.
The decision to endorse him for the first time in the organization’s five-year history arose from the current political and immigration landscape, said Dani Marrero Hi, deputy director of LUPE Votes.
Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texsa Tribne
The Rio Grande Valley, where LUPE is based, is the battleground for three competitive congressional races — Texas’ 15th, 34th and 28th districts.
Cuellar, from Laredo, currently represents the 28th district, which, under the congressional maps adopted last year, spans the Texas-Mexico border from the southern half of Maverick County down to southwest Hidalgo County. The district peaks at Atascosa, Live Oak, La Salle, and Dimmit counties.
The district — along with most border counties — shocked the nation by voting for Trump in 2024. The next year, Texas lawmakers redrew the district’s boundaries to be slightly more favorable to Republicans as part of a rare and controversial mid-decade redistricting. The district changes were based on the belief that Republicans would be able to hold onto support among Hispanic voters.
Despite the changes, a recent poll from Texas Southern University that surveyed 600 likely midterm election voters showed Cuellar with an 11-point lead against his opponent, Webb County Judge and former Democrat Tano Tijerina.
Still, the district is among those targeted by National Republicans as a potential pick-up.
“A lot of people have been paying attention to District 15, about Bobby Pulido turning this blue again,” Marrero Hi said about the Tejano musician running as a Democrat to flip District 15, which is anchored in Hidalgo County. “But the reality is that District 28 and 34 are just as much at risk of flipping red.”
The potential reality that the Rio Grande Valley — long a Democratic stronghold — could be represented entirely by Republicans was part of the calculus in the LUPE Votes board’s decision, leaders said.
“Based on that alone, the LUPE Votes board decided to recommend to voters to vote for Representative Cuellar and [Vicente] Gonzalez, knowing that the alternative for all three districts to flip red would mean completely hostile conditions for us to win any kind of change for our members,” Marrero Hi said.
The endorsement came with conditions — no more funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and no more militarization of the border, including funding for surveillance technology. The group also remains wary of Cuellar’s track record on reproductive rights and healthcare due to his lack of support for Medicare-for-All and for abortion protections.
But despite clarifying that their support for Cuellar is not a blanket endorsement, the backlash on social media was harsh.
“This is extremely disappointing and unnecessary,” Christopher Torres, an Edinburg resident, commented on social media. “I did not know you guys were interested in endorsing Republicans.”
“What a joke,” wrote another. “Endorsing these candidates is a stab in the back to immigrants and working families.”
Cuellar said the organization’s endorsement is important in obtaining the support of a wide cross-section of the community. He also respects their work in advocating for immigrants and migrant farmworkers, he said. In his conversations with them, Cuellar said he expressed a desire to work together.
“I said, ‘Listen, we can either work together in the same room, or you can be outside throwing rocks at me,’” Cuellar said.
A conservative Democrat
Gloria Galindo has a love-hate relationship with Cuellar. As the treasurer for Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, a wildlife conservation group based in Alamo, she has met with Cuellar regarding concerns over border wall construction.
He’s listened to their concerns, Galindo said, and Cuellar has pushed for protections against border wall construction in certain areas.
“He has been a champion for us,” Galindo said. “On the flip side, of course, he’s also someone who’s been a supporter of [the U.S. Department of Homeland Security], and well, the policies that came from that are the stuff that led to the border wall construction in the first place.”
Often describing a border wall as a 14th Century solution to a 21st Century problem, Cuellar has supported investing in technology like high-resolution cameras to secure the border.
And despite ICE’s aggressive, and sometimes fatal, tactics in carrying out Trump’s immigration crackdown, Cuellar does not support divesting funds from the agency. Instead, Cuellar wants to redirect ICE’s focus to targeting criminals and has pushed for ICE officers to wear body cameras.
Tijerina, his Republican opponent, has accused Cuellar of being a radical Democrat.
But Cuellar has built a reputation of being one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, willing to diverge from the party on issues like immigration, abortion and gun rights.
When Cuellar’s offices were raided by the FBI in 2022, progressives in the party saw his legal troubles as an opportunity to replace him with someone more closely aligned with their values. That did not come to pass. Cuellar defeated his opponent, Jessica Cisneros, in the 2022 primary election.
In May 2024, facing reelection again, Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted on charges of bribery and money laundering, but he had faced no Democratic challenger that year and was victorious in the general election. His charges were later dropped after he was pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Rio Grande Valley voters have a track record of electing moderate Democrats. At the congressional level, in addition to Cuellar, voters have elected moderate Vicente Gonzalez to represent them, first in District 15 and in District 34 after congressional redistricting drew him into the latter.
At the state level, most state senators and representatives who represent the Valley could be described as moderate too. When Texas House Democrats fled the state last year to break quorum as a way to block Republican lawmakers from approving a new congressional map, most of the Rio Grande Valley state representatives remained in the state.
But there are signs that the tide could be changing in favor of progressive candidates. Valley voters chose Julio Salinas, a progressive 26-year-old state house staffer, to be the Democratic nominee for the election for Texas House District 41. The seat is being vacated by Bobby Guerra, a Democrat from Edinburg, who announced his retirement last year.
During the same March primary that Salinas received the nomination, the majority of voters in Hidalgo County did not vote for Cuellar in his primary race. Instead, most voted for Ricardo Villarreal, a Laredo physician who holds positions to Cuellar’s left.
Still, Cuellar won all other counties in Congressional District 28.
Cuellar said he’s not worried about a progressive shift in his district. As the boundaries of congressional districts have shifted in Texas, Cuellar said he’s been able to adjust and work with new groups.
“I do see some changes there, but I will be able to adapt,” he said.
Some of his detractors recognize that having Cuellar in Congress has some advantages. He holds a high-ranking position in Congress, having served on the House Appropriations Committee for over a decade.
During Trump’s first term, Cuellar — along with the Rio Grande Valley members of Congress — had secured protections against border wall construction for several environmentally and historically sensitive areas by preventing funds from being used to build a border wall in those locations.
But through the One Big, Beautiful Bill, the Department of Homeland Security was able to bypass the appropriations process and use funds for constructing a border wall in those previously protected areas.
Cuellar has included language to protect those areas, once again, in the funding bill for 2027, but Congress is unlikely to vote on that legislation until the end of the year.
His status has been beneficial, Galindo said. And she’s not sure if she would rather have a more progressive candidate who is new to Congress or keep Cuellar with his seniority but conservative leanings.
“It would be great if we could have a Henry Cuellar that was also more progressive, is thinking about the environment, and protecting it,” Galindo said. “On the other hand, we do need somebody with his rank, and we know that he’s going to fight for the refuge and for these other places.”
Marrero Hi, the deputy director of LUPE Votes, values experience, but also emphasized the need to question whether power is being used to benefit the working class.
Often, experience is used as a reason to vote for incumbents during elections, but Marrero Hi said they need someone who is going to stand for their values and take political risks.
“I don’t know if we have really seen the benefits of his seniority, because you would think that if you have this much seniority, that you would be willing to take more political risks,” they said. “It doesn’t always feel like Representative Cuellar is willing to do that.”
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.