Today the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States is very controversial, but over 100 years ago, it used to be the other way around. Although most fugitive slaves took the Underground Railroad north into free states and Canada, a similar path existed to the south into Mexico. Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829 by Mexican President Vicente Guerrero.
Nathaniel Jackson and his family were instrumental in offering slaves refuge and helping them cross the Mexican border. Jackson was the son of a plantation owner in Alabama. He and his family owned slaves, but eventually emancipated them. He married Matilda Hicks, who was once a slave on his family's plantation, and headed to the Rio Grande Valley with their children and five other families in covered wagons in 1857.
There were many ferries set up across the Rio Grande in the 1850s, so border families were able to assist slaves to cross into Mexico. Although military forts were also present along the river (remnants of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s), the structures were too far from each other for border officials to patrol. It is believed that about 3,000 slaves escaped across the river in the 1850s.
The Texas Rangers was born out of an organization of men that were slave hunters. They tried to retrieve slaves that crossed the Rio Grande for slave owners and would be paid according to how far into Mexico the slaves were found. There is still a lot of history to be uncovered about the Underground Railroad to Mexico.
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Wow, I had no idea about this information! I think that the point you're addressing here also has a lot of value in relation to today and current refugee crises and deportations.
For example, some people felt very morally opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, but it was the law. Still, they knew that reporting runaway slaves would quite possibly mean ruining that person's life even more. In a sense, the slave hunters and the U.S. Marshals who went and re-captured slaves were "deporting" them back to the South and back to an awful life of slavery.
Today, some cities in the United States are "sanctuary cities," which means that they do not really cooperate with the national government's immigration laws because they don't want immigrants to be scared of being deported or having their family broken up if they are here illegally. In return, these immigrations are more likely to "report crimes, use health and social services, and enroll their children in school." Basically, it's a city that protects immigrants from the federal government. Unsurprisingly, our esteemed President Trump has threatened to crack down on sanctuary cities, but hopefully that won't deter local leaders from continuing to take the course of action that they feel is morally right.
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