The new patrol officer parked his black Dodge Charger outside a house off Main Street and approached on foot. A Mexican ballad was playing. Someone had called in a noise complaint, claiming it sounded as if people were fighting.
However, as Officer Jaron Alexander got closer, he found no evidence of a brawl. A middle-aged woman greeted him while her daughter, Joanna Martinez, petite and visibly pregnant, looked on. “What kind of party are you all having?” he asked. Behind her, three generations of an extended family were gathered, celebrating the baptism of a 3-month-old with pozole verde, horchata, and beers.
Alexander ran some IDs and found no issues. The music wasn’t even that loud, he thought. He wished them a good night and left.
This encounter in early October last year marked the beginning of numerous interactions between Alexander and Martinez in Ingram, a small town of 1.5 square miles and 1,900 residents along the Guadalupe River. It was also the only encounter before Ingram signed an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a decision that would profoundly impact the community and tear Martinez’s family apart.
“Her and I, at the beginning, I felt like we were running into each other all the time,” Alexander shared, during one of eight conversations over four months that provided insight into the mindset of a police officer involved in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
In a town as small as Ingram, where a drive from one end to the other takes just five minutes, more encounters were likely. In late October, Alexander pulled over a work truck for rolling through a stop sign, soon finding Martinez there, demanding he let her friends go instead of letting immigration agents take them. He did not comply. In November, he stopped another driver who turned out to be her cousin, the father of the baby celebrated at the baptism. Alexander handed him over to immigration agents as well.
Ingram, which had a Latino population of 45%, saw its police department assist in deporting the equivalent of 10% of its residents. A few weeks before her due date, Alexander pulled over Martinez herself, surprising her with his knowledge of her name and the type of car she drove. He warned her about the illegal window tint and allowed her to leave. Later, he caught a glimpse of her and her newborn daughter in the toy aisle at Walmart. Martinez, however, doubted it was her, as she couldn’t fathom running errands so soon after giving birth. Yet, in Alexander’s memory, she was there shopping for Christmas gifts.
Alexander, now in his mid-30s with dirty blond hair turning gray, insists he did not return to Ingram to assist in deporting his neighbors. Instead, he ended up making it part of his job. He had begun his law enforcement career in Ingram before taking a higher-paying role as a sheriff’s deputy. However, his life began to unravel, first with his marriage and later at the sheriff’s office: an internal investigation revealed he had an affair before his divorce and used a county vehicle to facilitate it, leading to his dismissal. He claims the investigator labeled him an “embarrassment to the profession.”
When Ingram’s Police Department welcomed him back, it was under a new chief — its eighth in five years — who faced pressure from the City Council to increase traffic stops, citations, and arrests. Alexander suggested to the chief that since the sheriff’s office had a deal with ICE, perhaps Ingram could explore a similar arrangement to bolster its department. “Blame me,” he eventually told people. “It’s my fault in a way.”
Donald Trump had regained the presidency, pledging to execute “the largest deportation in the history of our country.” The nation was still grappling with the implications of this promise. Expelling up to 4% of the U.S. population — an estimated 14 million undocumented residents — was a monumental task for a few thousand ICE agents alone.
In Chicago and soon Minneapolis, one approach to this effort involved masked agents from various federal agencies descending upon liberal cities to round up immigrants, sometimes resorting to violence against citizens who intervened.
Simultaneously, a quieter surge was taking place across the country. In September 2025, ICE announced new incentives for the 287(g) partnership program, which enlists local police as deputy immigration agents. The aggressive task force model adopted by Ingram included a $100,000 vehicle stipend, a $7,500 equipment stipend for every officer, quarterly performance bonuses, and funding for officer salaries and overtime. “By joining forces with ICE,” the announcement stated, “you’re not just gaining access to these unprecedented reimbursement opportunities — you’re becoming part of a national effort to ensure the safety of every American family.”
After the baptism party, Alexander completed an online course with ICE, qualifying him for time-and-a-half pay whenever he assisted the agency in apprehending immigrants. In the Texas Hill Country, he soon became the local face of this national crackdown.
“I’m friendly with the people that I meet,” Alexander remarked, “especially when they’re friendly to me.” Ingram was just beginning to recover from the worst natural disaster in a century, a flood that summer that claimed at least 139 lives along the Guadalupe River, including 25 girls at Camp Mystic. Towering bald cypress trees in the riverbed were left leaning, their branches bent by the 30-foot surge of water and mud.
As construction workers returned to rebuild the community via Junction Highway, Alexander began stopping them before they could reach their jobsites. Within three months of the baptism party, he and Ingram’s other patrol officer had delivered at least 70 individuals to immigration agents, targeting what the police chief called a “dumbfounding” number of undocumented drivers. By the end of the year, they would hand over the equivalent of 10% of Ingram to ICE.
After Christmas, the weight of his actions began to weigh heavily on Alexander. While patrolling, he noted a new ICE handler, a man in a ball cap and dark glasses, shadowing him in an unmarked SUV. Around lunchtime, he followed two Latino men in a 2008 GMC truck for several blocks before stopping them, citing failure to signal a turn.
Upon checking their identification, he discovered both men were undocumented. The agent in the unmarked SUV rolled up behind them. Alexander only recognized the passenger as Martinez’s husband, Ulices Macias, the father of her newborn daughter, when Martinez arrived in tears.
“I don’t normally do this,” Martinez recalls Alexander telling her, “but I’m going to open up the car. I’m going to take the handcuffs off him.” He allowed the family a moment together. In a video captured by Martinez’s younger sister, Alexander appeared expressionless as Martinez embraced Macias, who held their 2-week-old baby, swaddled in a white blanket, and hugged Martinez’s 4-year-old son.
Then, the ICE agent re-applied the handcuffs to Macias, chaining him and leading him away. Martinez fell to the ground, sobbing.
The images of the family he shattered resonated with Alexander for months, yet he continued to fulfill his duties. His next shift arrived just days after he handed over Macias, and he was back in his Charger, stopping cars on Junction Highway.
Alexander didn’t always aspire to be a police officer. He described himself as “kind of a chameleon.” Growing up in nearby Harper, he cycled through various jobs, from freight logistics to pest control and insurance, without completing college. Hoping to find his path, he arranged a ride-along with a police officer outside Austin. That day, he observed the officer using discretion in enforcing the law, which resonated with him.
In 2021, he enrolled in the police academy. Even before the floods, tensions were brewing in Ingram, as many Mexican immigrants and their families had settled there over the years, drawn by increasing border militarization that made it difficult for seasonal workers to cross back and forth. Latinos eventually composed 45% of the population, yet the City Council remained comprised entirely of white men.
A faction led by Mayor Claud Jordan and Mayor Pro Tem Rocky Hawkins gained control of the council in November 2020, dismantling previous governance structures in response to a new sewer project. They took direct control of the Police Department, cycling through chiefs. Several former city employees reported Hawkins using derogatory terms for Mexicans and pressuring the city to target Latinos through code enforcement or patrols.
The new chief, Dustin Breshears, faced pressure as ICE revived the task force program, which had been dormant for a dozen years until Trump’s return to office in January 2025. Under President Obama, the program had been phased out due to abuses, including racial profiling. Yet now, under Trump, any law enforcement agency, regardless of its history, was encouraged to sign up.
Breshears started attending City Council meetings with statistics on arrests, traffic stops, and what he termed “
