Juan Manuel Escobar

Juan Manuel Escobar was born on 11 March 1950 in Escobares, a small community in Starr County, Texas, to Filomeno Escobar and Rosita Vera Escobar. As a young man he worked as a migrant worker.

He attended Roma High School, where he helped make the Gladiators a basketball force. Playing center at 6 feet 1 inch, he averaged 24 points a game and was named to the Texas All-State Class AA first team. He also competed in the 440 at the Class AA state track final and served as student council president in his senior year. He graduated in 1969. He was later inducted into the Roma ISD Hall of Honor, the Laredo Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Rio Grande Valley Sports Hall of Fame in 2025.

After his military service he studied at the University of Texas-Pan American, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and earned a Bachelor of Science in biology in 1978.

Escobar joined the U.S. Marine Corps after high school and served in Vietnam with the 1st Marine Division. He was wounded in action in 1970 and received the Purple Heart. On his return he was assigned to Marine Barracks 8th and I in Washington, D.C., where he served as a body bearer with the presidential honour guard. He was a pallbearer at the funerals of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, the most decorated Marine. After leaving active duty he served in the Marine Corps Reserve, reaching the rank of staff sergeant as a platoon sergeant in a reconnaissance unit.

He joined the U.S. Border Patrol in 1978, starting in Falfurrias, and moved to Kingsville as a supervisor. He became Patrol Agent in Charge of the Kingsville station and ran the Sarita checkpoint for several years. His family credited him with helping to establish the Border Patrol's K-9 programme and its BORTAC tactical unit. He was promoted to senior special agent with a multi-agency federal task force and retired from the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

He had already served on school boards in Falfurrias and Kingsville, including as board president. In May 2003 he won a special election to the Texas House of Representatives for District 43, succeeding Irma Lerma Rangel, who had died in office. In the House he served on committees including Defense Affairs and State-Federal Relations, where he was vice chair, Criminal Jurisprudence, House Administration, Border and Intergovernmental Affairs, and Land and Resource Management. In the 2008 Democratic primary he lost to Tara Rios Ybarra, taking 46.25 percent of the vote, and he left the House in January 2009.

In 2010 he was elected Kleberg County Judge, the county's chief executive, and served from 2011 until December 2014.

Escobar lived in Kingsville, Texas, with his wife of 54 years, Rosie Gonzalez Escobar. They had a daughter, Bonnie, and a son, Eddie, and two grandsons. He was a lay minister and an administrator at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Kingsville, served as a major in the Civil Air Patrol, and was a keen genealogist.

Juan Manuel Escobar died in Kingsville, Texas, on 12 August 2026, aged 76. His death was announced by Turcotte-Piper Mortuary in Kingsville. The cause of death was not made public.

A visitation and rosary were held on 18 August 2026 in Kingsville at St. Gertrude Catholic Church, followed by a funeral Mass there on 19 August. He was buried with military honours at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio on 25 August 2026.

Escobar's life took him from migrant work in the Rio Grande Valley to the battlefields of Vietnam, the presidential honour guard, senior posts in federal law enforcement and elected office at state and county level. His family remembered him as an athlete, soldier, leader, genealogist, father, husband and role model to many in the community, and his high school basketball achievements were honoured by halls of fame in Roma, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.