More than 600 parishioners filled the Knights of Columbus Hall Events Center in Mercedes, Texas on October 11 for Valley Interfaith's 2026 Accountability Session, where county judge candidates were asked, on the spot, to commit to a sweeping agenda covering food assistance, healthcare, flooding, workforce training and immigration enforcement. One moment cut through the policy talk: a young man named Jose told the crowd his father had previously been deported and that his mother had been taken into immigration custody just weeks earlier and remained detained. His remarks drew a standing ovation.
The session drew attendees from Willacy, Hidalgo and Cameron counties, including members of Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement, known as VIDA, a workforce program aimed at helping local residents move into higher-paying careers. In an interview afterward, Father Kevin Collins, pastor at St. Eugene de Mazenod Catholic Church in Brownsville, described the gathering as a community-led campaign focused on working and poor families, according to Rio Grande Guardian. Collins praised Jose for speaking publicly about his family's separation, saying it conflicts with basic human dignity.
Candidates Split Over Showing Up
Among the county judge candidates on the ballot this cycle, three attended and publicly committed to the agenda: Mauro Garza, Paul Anders and incumbent Aurelio ‘Keter’ Guerra, according to Rio Grande Guardian's separate account of the county judge candidates session. Democratic candidate Estevan Guerra did not attend, and the organization marked him down as opposing its agenda. Valley Interfaith had sent invitations to absent candidates as early as July, and it marked their empty seats with signs reading “no.”
Collins said candidates' absence raised a question of respect for the people who would vote. The group noted that several other candidates also skipped the session, even as nearly all who did attend — spanning both the Democratic and Republican parties — committed to supporting the agenda's items, according to organizers. Valley Interfaith says it is nonpartisan and endorses issues rather than parties or candidates, a position it lays out on its own site.
Benefits, Health Care and a Workforce Push
Collins pointed to cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding and threats to Social Security as among the concerns driving the session. Those fears track with specifics in Valley Interfaith's broader agenda, which calls for protecting and increasing federal and state funding for SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, mental health services and affordable healthcare, per the organization's published agenda. The agenda also warns that a new federal law will force Texas to pay roughly $117 million more each year just to administer SNAP, and as much as $709 million more annually if the state fails to reduce benefit-calculation errors.
On jobs, the agenda calls for increased funding for workforce programs like Project VIDA that prepare residents for high-demand careers with family-sustaining wages. It also presses for more investment in flood protection, drainage, safe drinking water, road repairs and public transportation in neglected neighborhoods and colonias, issues Valley Interfaith says it built after conducting neighborhood walks, house meetings and civic academies across the region.
Family Separation and a Growing Data-Center Fight
Collins said immigration enforcement in the Valley has gone too far and has devastated families, adding that someone comes to him every other week with a relative who has been taken into immigration custody. Valley Interfaith's agenda calls for due-process protections, an end to family separation and indiscriminate enforcement against long-term residents, and a pathway to residency for Dreamers. The agenda notes that current DACA recipients, including those in Texas, can continue requesting renewals, though new initial applications are not being granted, per Rio Grande Guardian's earlier report on the group's legislative agenda rollout.
That same agenda states that nearly 71% of people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction, and that Texas holds more ICE detainees than any other state, with nearly 19,000 people detained on an average day. A separate report from the Caminos Institute, summarized by MyRGV.com, found at least 13,377 undocumented individuals were apprehended through interior enforcement in the Rio Grande Valley between 2022 and 2026, with 5,087 detained in 2025 alone. That report estimated 86.3% of the cases it examined ended in deportation, resulting in a loss of 9,473 workers and nearly $231.7 million in labor income, while projecting local taxpayers could ultimately contribute more than $300 million toward federal enforcement costs.
Collins also flagged proposed data-center development and a lack of transparency as a rising concern among Valley families. Valley Interfaith's agenda demands full public transparency and community input before any data center is approved, including disclosure of ownership, tax breaks, electricity and water use, cooling operations and neighborhood-protection plans.
What Comes Next
Valley Interfaith says its legislative agenda spans state, federal and local levels, built from conversations with congregations, schools, nonprofits and neighborhoods across the region. The organization plans to encourage people to vote in November, and its leaders intend to meet with all elected officials after the election to build working relationships and pursue legislative solutions, Collins said.
