Eagle Pass is a city in and the county seat of Maverick County in the U.S. state of Texas. Its population was 28,130 as of the 2020 census. Eagle Pass borders the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, which is to the southwest and across the Rio Grande. The Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras metropolitan area (EP-PN) is one of six binational metropolitan areas along the United States-Mexican border. As of January 2008, according to the US census, the EPPN's population was 48,401 people, and the Piedras Negras metropolitan area's population was 169,771. History Eagle Pass was the first American settlement on the Rio Grande. Originally known as Camp Eagle Pass, it served as a temporary outpost for the Texas militia, which had been ordered to stop illegal trade with Mexico during the Mexican–American War. Eagle Pass is so named because the contour of the hills through which the Rio Grande flows bore a fancied resemblance to the outstretched wings of an eagle. General William Leslie Cazneau (1807–1876) founded the Eagle Pass townsite in the 1840s. In 1850, Rick Pawless opened a trading post called Eagle Pass. In 1871, Maverick County was established, and Eagle Pass was named the county seat. During the remainder of the 19th century, schools and churches opened, the mercantile and ranching industries grew, and a railway was built. Lawsuit The City of Eagle Pass was sued by the US government in 2008 to gain access to the land and construct a fence on the United States-Mexico border. Maverick County corruption scandal An ongoing public corruption, bid-rigging, and kickback investigation by the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety has resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of all four Maverick County commissioners, one justice of the peace, and several local government employees and businessmen since October 2012, making it the largest public criminal probe in Eagle Pass and Maverick County history. On February 20, 2015, a federal grand jury in Del Rio indicted a county commissioner and a former county justice of the peace in connection with an alleged bribery, kickback, and bid-rigging scheme, all related to the ongoing public corruption investigation. On February 23, 2015, former Maverick County Commissioner Rodolfo Heredia was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to perform 1,200 hours of community service after completing his prison term. He was also ordered to pay a