I didn't grow up there, but my dad managed and lived on a ranch down near EP in the mid-2000s. His foreman was eventually rounded up by the feds for being a Zetas cartel agent. I hung out with his kids several times, I don't think they even knew. My grandpa was the executor of an estate that held a ranch down outside of Catarina that I went to every year as a kid up until the year I graduated HS. Every single year we would hand food and jugs of water to desperate migrants (I would estimate at least a dozen or so every summer and fall, and sometimes a few in the winter) and they all went on their way after thanking us. Thinking back now about where we were, I doubt even half of them ended up surviving.
I cannot personally imagine how any of these people became so frightened of Mexicans, or whatever other Latin country's denizens they're most afraid of. You have to just spend your life never interacting with anyone outside your shitty Dallas suburb, I guess.