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Latino conservatives tell Eric Garcia that high costs at the supermarket and draconian immigration policies could cost the GOP most of the gains Trump made last year
Sunday 23 November 2025 12:52 GMTComments
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Latino Republicans are warning the GOP that the 2025 elections earlier this month show that their party risks losing the gains President Donald Trump made with Hispanic voters in 2024.
Despite Trump’s rhetoric calling Mexicans rapists, drug dealers and criminals in 2016, he made significant inroads with Latino voters in his 2020 and 2024 campaigns. Those blocs helped him turn Florida from a swing state to deep red and flip states with large Mexican-American populations like Arizona and Nevada into his column.
He also cut into margins in deep-blue states and cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Trump did so on a message of lowering costs and removing the flood of illegal immigrants who came into the country during Joe Biden’s open-border reign. That surge in illegal immigration from Latin America during the Biden administration frustrated many Hispanics and caused historically Democratic areas along the U.S. Mexico border to vote Republican — often for the first time.
But the same forces that led Latinos to vote Republicans into power seem to be working against them now as Hispanics register their anger at draconian efforts to round up, deport and detain undocumented immigrants — and even some migrants in the United States lawfully. Even more pressing, many Hispanic voters are voicing their anger at the high cost of living, which they see Trump as doing nothing to correct.
open image in galleryRepublicans had flocked back to President Donald Trump (pictured during the annual Latino Coalition Legislative Summit in 2020) during the last election. Many are starting to regret that choice. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) (Getty Images)Republicans bled voters across the country this year when it came to Hispanics. In 2024, Trump became the first Republican to win Passaic County, which is about 43.2 percent Latino, since George H.W. Bush in 1992 when he won it by 2.8 points. But in 2025, Democrat Mikie Sherrill beat Republican Jack Ciattarelli by a little less than 15 points in Passaic.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) campaigned for Sherrill in New Jersey ahead of the election in the heavily Hispanic Hudson County. Gallego said Latinos felt a double barrel as they went to the polls.
“Cost and also people feeling like this administration is attacking Latinos as a community as a whole,” Gallego told The Independent.
Gallego for his part has tried to thread the needle between humane treatment on immigration while also co-sponsoring the Laken Riley Act, which Trump signed. But he’s also criticized Trump for his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which have caused a pinch in voters’ pockets.
The same trend happened in California when voters turned out for Proposition 50, which allowed a one-time redraw of the state’s congressional maps to give Democratic five more seats. In 2024, Trump flipped the majority-Latino Imperial County, which is right on the US-Mexico border. But in 2025, 60 percent of voters in Imperial voted for Proposition 50.
This came as Trump sent the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell opposition to raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In 2024, Los Angeles County, whose population a little less than half Hispanic, swung five points to the right. But in 2025, it swung nine points to the left.
“if you think about those that voted for Trump, but have, like, immigrant parents or immigrant family members, they certainly had this narrative that they weren't going to go after their families,” Daisy Reyes, an associate professor at the University of California Merced, told The Independent. “I think the way that the policy is rolled out is definitely that's not the way it's happening.”
open image in galleryJack Ciattarelli, prays with faith leaders while speaking to supporters at a restaurant popular with the Latino community on October 23, 2025 in Paterson, New Jersey. But Ciattarelli failed to hold the gains Trump made with Hispanics in New Jersey. ((Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images))Democrats even saw in-roads in Miami, home to historically conservative Cuban-Americans fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist regime. Democrat Eileen Higgins cleared enough votes to make it to the runoff in December, which set off alarm bells for Hispanics in South Florida.
“Wake up. Wake up,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), who is Cuban-American, told The Independent. Salazar represents Miami, where Democrat Eileen Higgins qualified to make it into the mayoral runoff.
Salazar has said she wants to use the moment to push her bill, known as the Dignity Act, which would give legal status but not citizenship to undocumented immigrants who did not break the law.
“And the good thing is that the leadership understands it, but now the writing is on the wall and immigration is the economy,” she said. “We don't have immigration, we don't have an economy.”
Hispanics vote in varying ways depending on how their family emigrated to the United States, how long they’ve lived and where they lived. But Trump made inroads all across the country in 2024 and Republicans lost ground this month. On Friday, Trump met with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who won back many disaffected Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 out of frustration.
Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who represents a heavily Latino district in the Bronx and Queens, said Latinos have been hit had by the economy.
open image in galleryRep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), right, said that Republicans need to ‘wake up’ on immigration after Republicans shed Latino votes. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), right, said that Republicans need to focus on pocketbook issues. (Getty Images)“I think, by nature of the fact that so many of us are first and second generation or third generation, we're a very working class electorate,” she told The Independent. Ocasio-Cortez, endorsed fellow democratic socialist Mamdani ahead of the mayoral primary.
“Consequently, that means that that economic populism is an effective message, and focusing on working-class people, focusing on working-class issues, I think, is really what this moment is about,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez also cut an ad in both English and Spanish to support Proposition 50 in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the initiative after Texas redrew its congressional districts after Republicans made significant gains with Hispanic voters in heavily Latino areas of the Rio Grande Valley and majority-Hispanic areas.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) represents a district that has the largest span of the U.S.-Mexico border of any congressional district.
“We're very family oriented people,” Gonzales told The Independent. “We want to make sure our family is protected, but our pocketbook matters. It matters a lot.”
Gonzales said he hoped that Trump would pass the $2,000 rebate checks to boost Latino support.
Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), who represents a district in the Rio Grande Valley, said that Trump has fulfilled promises on making life more affordable such as reducing regulations in oil, a major employer of Hispanics in Texas and border security. She added that Republicans also need to focus on home ownership and helping families buy their first house.
“We still have a close to a year left in the election, and I think that the Latinos will still be voting Republican, because Republicans are for the working, hard, working, blue collar Americans that want to make affordable, make life affordable again,” she said.
Salazar said she felt that Trump would take up her legislation.
“Trump is not stupid,” she said. “He is construction and hospitality guy. He reads the writing on the wall.”
But there is little sign his administration is listening. This week, his Department of Homeland Security tweeted a post on on X that ripped off another post from a “manliness” influencer to justify the removal of immigrants.
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