Gee, How Did Latino Americans Become So Alienated from the GOP?

By Jim Geraghty

Friday, November 07, 2025

 

Back in September, the Supreme Court made a far-reaching decision on immigration enforcement that probably didn’t get as much attention as it deserved. Our Dan McLaughlin summarized:

 

The Court’s order this morning in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo stayed an August 1 order by district judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the Central District of California, a Biden appointee and former Obama Justice Department official. . . .

 

The crux of the case is whether the government may stop individuals in Los Angeles on suspicion of being illegal immigrants on the basis of four factors: “(i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the order attempted to enjoin Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only from stops based solely on those four criteria, but as Kavanaugh noted, there are inherent problems in the judiciary trying to prospectively micromanage law enforcement in such fashion. . . .

 

Those first two listed factors — location and type of work — strike me as extremely consequential for how we think about this type of law enforcement. Because I’d like to think that we would all agree that we don’t want U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopping people simply based upon their race or their language or accent and asking to see proof of citizenship or legal immigration status.

 

My guess is that at some point in your life, you’ve been falsely accused of something, and you didn’t like it one bit. Now imagine how it feels to be a Latino U.S. citizen and worrying that someone might accuse you of being an illegal immigrant, or you might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some ICE agent thinks he should slap handcuffs on you.

 

Yes, U.S. permanent residents age 18 or older are required to always have a valid green card in their possession. But if you’re a U.S. citizen, you’re not required by law to carry anything. And remember, a driver’s license is not necessarily proof of citizenship, because 19 states and the District of Columbia allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Are Latino U.S. citizens supposed to carry around their passports at all times? Wear your best suit everywhere you go, and think you look too well-dressed to be an illegal immigrant?

 

For some Latino American citizens, this is not a hypothetical concern:

 

At least 35 events celebrating Hispanic heritage across 21 states have been canceled or postponed, with most organizers citing concerns relating to the political climate and possible interactions with ICE, according to a Washington Post analysis. One example: Organizers said they couldn’t risk going forward with the Salvadoreñisimo Festival — usually held in Maryland’s Montgomery County — out of fear that the event would lead to detentions.

 

Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center in D.C., said there has been a “dampening of all activities that put people in danger.” . . .

 

As Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” took off in Chicago in early September, residents of the heavily Mexican neighborhoods of Pilsen and La Villita noted how quiet and still their streets had become.

 

Maritza Lara, a vendor selling fruit out of a cart in Pilsen, estimated her sales had dropped about 50 percent from the day neighborhood WhatsApp and Signal groups started reporting ICE vehicles in the area.

 

“It’s pretty serious. There’s no people around,” she said. “Nobody knows how it works anymore. Even if you have papers, even if you have everything, they’re still stopping people.”

 

By the way, the U.S. has an estimated 775,000 illegal immigrants from Europe and Canada, and it seems safe to assume a good chunk of those folks are white. How worried are those folks about being stopped by ICE when walking down the street? If you’re white, how much time do you spend worrying about accidentally getting swept up in an ICE raid? My guess is not much.

 

The U.S. government absolutely must enforce its immigration laws, and this requires finding people who are in the country illegally and deporting them back to their country of origin. However, the U.S. government absolutely must do this in a way that does not make Latino U.S. citizens feel like they are a target, born suspect, or somehow second-class citizens. Bilingualism is not a crime.

 

Considering all this, it’s not exactly shocking if a lot of Latino U.S. citizens currently feel like they’re being unfairly targeted or run a much higher risk of needing to prove their American citizenship in a way that other demographics do not. And it’s less than surprising that these Americans would sour on the Trump administration and the Republican Party quickly.

 

From NBC News:

 

When asked how Trump’s immigration agenda is playing in Latino communities, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., told NBC News, “I’d be less than honest if I told you, ‘No, everything’s great.’”

 

“There are some things that we need to change and have a course correction with in regards to immigration,” Gimenez added. “Everybody’s in favor of gang members, criminals, et cetera, being deported and all that. Not too many people are in favor of grandmothers and caregivers and all that you know falling under the same umbrella. That’s the course correction.”

 

Another House Republican from Texas, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the election results, said the GOP needs to do a better job keeping Latino voters inside their tent — especially without Trump on the ballot in next year’s midterms.

 

“Clearly it’s an issue, and a big one,” the member said.

 

Not that Republicans don’t have enough to worry about, but remember, the big Texas redistricting effort they passed and signed into law was based upon the theory that the state’s Latinos were now much more likely to vote for the GOP.

 

Politico, at the end of July:

 

Texas Republicans are betting big on their recent gains with Latino voters, releasing new congressional maps that heavily favor the GOP and create four red, majority-Hispanic districts in the process. . . . The GOP’s maps indicate the party is bullish on Latino voters continuing their rightward political shift even without Trump atop the ballot.

 

Suddenly, that doesn’t look like a safe bet at all.

 

According to the exit polls from Tuesday, just 5 percent of the voters in Virginia self-identified as Latino, but that group split, 67 percent to 33 percent, in favor of Abigail Spanberger. In New Jersey, 10 percent of voters self-identified as Latino, and they preferred Democrat Mikie Sherrill over Republican Jack Ciattarelli, 68 percent to 31 percent. In New York City, 17 percent voters self-identified as Latino. Among that group, 52 percent voted for Zohran Mamdani, 39 percent voted for Andrew Cuomo, and 8 percent voted for Curtis Sliwa. And in California, 22 percent of voters self-identified as Latino, and they split in favor of the redistricting referendum, 71 percent to 22 percent.

 

Yes, Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and California range from left-leaning to hard left, and the Latinos in those states are more likely to vote Democrat than Latinos in places like Texas and Florida. And American Latinos are diverse — not just between different countries of origin, but within their own groups. Americans of Mexican heritage in Texas vote differently from Americans of Mexican heritage in California. Approximately 83 percent of Latinos in California are of Mexican heritage, and depending on the poll, approximately 82 percent to 86 percent of Latinos in Texas are of Mexican heritage. And yet as you know, the two states have dramatically different political cultures. In 2024, Trump won 55 percent of the Latino voters in Texas, according to the exit polls. They didn’t conduct exit polls in California in 2024, but the sense from available data is that while Trump improved upon the GOP’s traditional poor performance among California Latinos, Kamala Harris still had a considerable advantage among this group of voters.

 

But Trump’s big wins among Latinos in 2024 struck me as driven by two forces largely beyond Republican control: this demographic’s general lack of faith in doddering old Joe Biden and rambling Kamala Harris, and consistently growing frustration with the economy during the Biden years. While Latino voters have lots of concerns and care about a lot of issues, the economy, particularly the cost of living, is number one. As NBC News noted in its 2024 election post-mortem, “From the beginning of the election to its final days, Latino voters in interviews and polls consistently named the economy, inflation or higher costs as their number one issue and gave Trump the advantage on them.”

 

The unemployment rate is up a smidgen from January (from 4 percent to 4.3 percent), the inflation rate is at 3 percent and has consistently been closer to 3 percent than 2 percent.

 

And in fact, a new poll of Texas Latinos out this week affirms that this demographic is not seeing what they wanted to see from the first year of the Trump administration:

 

However, 66 percent of Latino voters in Texas believe Republicans in Congress and President Trump are failing to focus enough on the economy.

 

The survey also found that 64 percent of Texas Latino voters hold the President and Republicans responsible for the federal government shutdown, compared with 21 percent who blame Democrats. On job performance, 64 percent disapprove of how Republicans are handling Congress, and 66 percent disapprove of President Trump’s performance. Among those who voted for him in 2024, 19 percent would not vote for him in a do-over, compared to one of Harris voters who would not vote for her.

 

Four of the top five priorities for Hispanic voters in Texas continue to be driven by pocketbook issues:

 

·        #1 Cost of living/inflation (56 percent) — Cost of food and basic living expenses, housing affordability, gas prices and electricity bills.

 

·        #2 Health care (34 percent) — Rising health care costs, monthly premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

 

·        #3 Jobs and economy (32 percent) — Wages, job security, prices and job creation.

 

·        #4 Housing (31 percent) — Rising cost of rent and cost of electricity, utilities, taxes, home insurance, home maintenance/repairs and lack of affordable housing.

 

I suspect few Latino Americans voted for Trump last year because they cared a great deal about the U.S. Agency for International Development, or they believed past elections had been rigged, or because they wanted the U.S. to resume nuclear testing, or because they wanted to see a new White House ballroom. They wanted a more affordable cost of living. If Republicans can’t point to serious progress on this issue a year from now, the 2026 midterms will be even worse for the GOP than Tuesday night.