In Starr County, Texas, Marcus Canales told The Epoch Times that the past 100 days under President Donald Trump have made him wonder if he is living in “the matrix,” the fictional, computer-generated world made famous in the 1999 Hollywood science fiction movie of the same name.

That is because of the night-and-day difference in the number of illegal immigrants he has seen in the county since Trump took back the White House. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump scored historic gains in this heavily Hispanic county, and it went red for the first time in 130 years.