How American Latinos Came To Embrace Donald Trump's Immigration Policy

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Just a few years ago, if any Political analyst or pundit had predicted that a US presidential candidate would gain a larger share of the Latino vote by promising to shut down the border, slam the door on migrants, deport millions of people, and even deny citizenship to babies born to immigrants, they would have been politely called misinformed or plainly insane.

As has been widely reported , Donald trump achieved precisely that in November. And now, in his first week back in the Oval Office, he is rolling out policies to achieve those goals.

Undoubtedly, the main issue that drew Hispanics to Trump was the economy. Like many other voters, they longed for a solution to high prices, and they looked back positively at the state of the economy during his first term before the pandemic crash.

But, despite his tough stance on immigration and enforcement, he seemed to get even more Hispanic support this time around, with 46% of the vote in 2024 compared with 32% in 2020 and 28% in 2016. In other recent elections, Latino voters tended to support Democrats in much larger numbers, except for George W. Bush's win in 2004.

Traditionally, Republican Latinos, particularly in Florida and Texas, have favoured legislation to address the issue of the approximately 11 million people who are in the US unlawfully – with 53% saying they should be allowed to remain after paying a fine. For the most part, Hispanic Republican members of Congress from Florida, Texas, California and other states fully backed – alongside Democrats – legislative efforts for comprehensive immigration reform.

National origin, political divisions and even racism have always played a part in how US Latinos feel about immigration . Just like in other nations that experience big migration waves, those who made their way legally sometimes end up resenting those who didn't.

There has been a clear demographic shift on who makes up the waves of migrants arriving at the US southern border . Until about a decade ago, those migrants used to be overwhelmingly Mexican. In 2014, however, the Obama administration faced a crisis when hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, many of them unaccompanied minors, showed up at the border with Mexico asking for asylum.

As a result, we saw for the first time many of the familiar images of migrants in cage-type immigration facilities. We saw these again in 2018 when the Trump administration faced a new wave of migrant caravans, leading to his infamous policy of family separation.

The Biden administration was blamed by voters for not being able to fully solve the issue of hundreds of thousands of migrants at the US southern border. Even more, his administration saw the largest surge of immigrants in US history. Net migration (the number of people entering the country minus the number of people leaving) averaged 2.4 million people per year from 2021 to 2023 . The total net migration for Biden's term is expected to exceed 8 million once data for 2024 is available.

Only at the very end did the Biden administration resort to executive actions aimed at restricting asylum.

In the eyes of many voters, including Latinos in immigrant-friendly South Florida and South Texas, Biden's policies largely failed to stem the tide and change the image of an unsolved border crisis.

While it is true that the Republican governors of Texas and Florida exploited the issue by bussing and flying large numbers of migrants to cities like Chicago, Washington DC and New York – creating problems there – the political damage was done.

Trump is not simply reversing many of Biden's policies, he is going further. His series of executive actions aim to bring the US asylum system to a sudden halt, discourage further migration and ultimately spread fear among the undocumented population. In the words of the new border czar, Tom Homan, deportation operations already started, with the arrest of immigrants deemed public threats .

He ordered officials to shut down an app called CBP One, launched by the Biden administration. Migrants had used this to make appointments with US immigration agents at the border and begin the tortuous process of requesting asylum. Around 30,000 appointments were suddenly cancelled.

Another executive order closed a programme to allow vetted migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the US. Nearly half a million people came through through the programme, established by Biden officials as a way to ease the burden at the border.

His idea to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, was already ridiculed by Mexico's president , Claudia Sheinbaum. However, his administration will again put pressure on his southern neighbour by restarting his Remain in Mexico policy. This forced migrants to wait in that country while any asylum claims were resolved in US courts.

Trump is also reviving policies from his first term, such as militarising the border and sending 1,500 federal troops to patrol it. He is again shutting down the system through which the US accepts refugees, which the Biden administration slowly rebuilt. More than 10,000 refugees approved to come to the US are now stranded.

Perhaps his most controversial executive order is his attempt to end birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th amendment of the US constitution. Until Trump made it a mainstream policy goal, reversing birthright citizenship was usually the talk of nativist organisations and hardline lawmakers, with the clear goal of limiting both legal and illegal immigration.

The legal reinterpretation of this amendment aims to stop recognising as American citizens any children born to immigrants who are undocumented or temporarily on US soil. It would even affect children of mothers who are in the US as tourists or foreign students. As of Wednesday, 22 states and two cities , San Francisco and Washington DC, are challenging the order in federal courts.

Trump is making sure that everyone gets the message his administration is serious about his immigration crackdown. He ordered the removal of four top officials from the Justice Department's office that oversees immigration courts. Similarly, the Justice Department will now investigate any state or local law enforcement official who refuses to carry out immigration enforcement directives. Many of these new policies may deeply affect those Latino constituencies that helped to vote Trump back in office.

MENAFN23012025000199003603ID1109123695