The illegal immigrants had crossed the river in defiance of the law, then escaped capture by sneaking past armed patrols in the dark. They did not have the required paperwork and were ordered to leave, but the authorities suspected the immigrants would probably defy them.

It is a scenario that happens every day on the Texas-Mexico border. But in this particular incident, the immigrants were white, English-speaking Americans who were looking for a better life in Texas. And the authorities who were trying to keep them out were Mexican.

The episode offers some modern lessons, according to one Texas official.

In 1830, Mexico passed a law banning almost all immigration from the United States and provided for military garrisons along its border to enforce it.

Image Jerry Patterson, land commissioner. Credit... Callie Richmond for The Texas Tribune

Col. José de las Piedras, writing a letter (in Spanish) to Stephen F. Austin, the “father of Texas,” reported that he had encountered the immigrants east of the Trinity River heading west in what was then Mexico toward Austin’s colony, west of modern-day Houston. He checked them for passports, but they had none, so he ordered them to leave Mexico pursuant to the new immigration law. They talked the colonel into letting them tend to some business in the colony, though, by promising to return and then exit the country within 20 days.