{"id":14500,"date":"2025-04-30T16:25:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T16:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14500"},"modified":"2025-05-02T16:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T16:13:12","slug":"trumps-latino-backers-are-having-buyers-remorse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14500","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Latino Backers Are Having Buyer\u2019s Remorse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Alejandro Puyana<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Beyond betrayal.\u201d Those are the words that Adelys Ferro, director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said<\/a> in February, after the Trump Administration announced they would end temporary protected status (TPS) for almost 600,000 Venezuelans living in the U.S. And betrayed they should feel. Naturalized Venezuelans were crucial in Donald Trump\u2019s re-taking of Miami-Dade<\/a> county\u2014prompting Florida Democrats to call it a \u201cday of reckoning.\u201d The city of Doral alone (also known as Doralzuela, because of its massive Venezuelan community), voted for Trump to the tune of 61%\u2014Hillary Clinton had carried this Florida municipality in 2016 with 68%. A complete flip of the script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, Trump made gains<\/a> all over the U.S. with Hispanic voters, mostly Hispanic men. Puerto Ricans helped him secure Pennsylvania, and he even improved with Cubans, already overwhelmingly Republican. He didn\u2019t trick anyone. His stance on immigration was, and is, draconic. He stood by as his supporters demonized<\/a> and humiliated<\/a> Latinos of every origin. \u201cWhen I talked about the border, you know who the biggest fans of that were? (They) were the Hispanics, Latinos,\u201d Trump said at a rally in Miami in November 2022, days before announcing his second White House bid. \u201cEverybody said, \u2018Oh, he’s going to hurt himself with Hispanics.\u2019 Actually, it turned out to be the exact opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It begs the question: Are Latinos OK with what has proved a scorched-earth approach against big segments of the Hispanic community, just three months into his presidency<\/a>? Or are there signs of regret\u2014of buyer\u2019s remorse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jury is still out. \u201cThe Hispanic Voter\u201d is not a monolith, and so the answer varies. The most overtly targeted community, Venezuelans, seem to be taking a turn. Many supported Trump because of their collective allergy toward anything remotely lefty\u2014seeing Hugo Ch\u00e1vez or his successor Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s shadow on Kamala Harris. They held onto the hope that Trump would somehow oust the leftist autocrat (some dreaming of Marines storming the Venezuelan presidential palace). What a rude awakening when the first overture toward Maduro\u2019s regime was a warm diplomatic meeting<\/a>, negotiating for the release of six imprisoned Americans. A few days later, in early February, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the first round of termination of TPS protections<\/a> for Venezuelans, citing \u201cnotable improvements in\u2026 the economy, public health, and crime that allow for these nationals to be safely returned to their home country.\u201d The idea that the country is now safer for exiles to return\u2014after Maduro stole an election<\/a> and became even more repressive<\/a>\u2014is both a lie, and an insult to Venezuelans\u2019 intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump Administration has started on Cubans<\/a> as well. In March, Trump ended a \u201cparole\u201d program (established by Joe Biden) that allowed over 100,000 Cubans to live and work in the U.S. A much more established, and powerful, voting block for Republicans, it makes the move a head-scratcher. The Administration is banking on older Cubans\u2019 strong anti-immigrant sentiment, and, for now, it may be panning out.<\/a> The reactions have been tepid so far. But there seems to be a concerted effort<\/a> to begin deporting Cubans en-masse, with hundreds of them being detained, or given deportation orders, during previously routine immigration check-ins. What will happen when the Cuban community starts to feel these losses in earnest? When it starts to affect their own families, or their businesses? The Trump Administration is gambling here with a vital Republican constituency in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then we have the shocking, stomach churning, and legally complex deportations<\/a> to El Salvador\u2019s maximum-security prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). In a bizarre invocation of a 1700\u2019s law, Trump has deported, without due process, hundreds of immigrants, not to their home country, but to El Salvador. He\u2019s suggested that American citizens (he calls them \u201cthe homegrowns\u201d<\/a>) are next. We already know that some were sent in error, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a>; or were not associated with gang activity, like Andry Jos\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez Romero<\/a>, a gay hairdresser with no criminal record. They, among others<\/a>, are now living in the most dehumanizing conditions imaginable, with the real possibility of never getting out again. As footage of these cruel and unusual deportations have flooded American media, it will certainly put to the test Trump\u2019s theory that Latinos love him because of his iron fist on immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last piece of the puzzle is the economy\u2014Trump\u2019s economic message is the reason many pundits credit him<\/a> for his gains with Hispanic males. The Administration would love to believe that they are now part of his base, but a detailed analysis<\/a> of voting records carried out by POLITICO seems to indicate otherwise. In 2024 Latinos were disproportionately more likely to \u201csplit the ticket\u201d\u2014voting for Trump and <\/em>Democratic candidates down the ballot. It should give Republicans pause, and light a fire in Democrats looking to re-gain losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will not help Republicans that Trump\u2019s trade wars<\/a> have proven disastrous, and that Latinos, who generally earn less than other communities, will be most affected by rising prices. Combine this with the worry from Latino business owners<\/a> of how Trump\u2019s mass deportations will affect their workforce\u2014millions of Latinos, documented or not, are vital for the smooth operation of huge industries like farming, construction, and retail\u2014and you\u2019ve got a bitter recipe brewing for a Republican Party hoping to protect their gains with the Hispanic vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reckoning will come in November 2026, during the mid-terms. Two things seem to be clear. One, the days of taking the Hispanic vote for granted are over\u2014Democrats will have to get away from identity politics alone and focus on real issues, starting with the economy. Two, Republicans will have to answer for the mayhem created in Trump\u2019s first two years on their own, without Trump\u2019s magnetism at the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latino-heavy districts<\/a> will be under a microscope, and a new Pew Research Center poll<\/a> show Hispanics widely disapprove of Trump\u2019s performance so far (72%, the highest disapproval rating behind Black Americans). But these are just numbers. The only way to measure how much Latinos regret their part in bringing Trump to power will be at the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alejandro Puyana is a writer living in Austin and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His story, \u201cThe Hands of Dirty Children,\u201d was selected by Curtis Sittenfeld for Best American Short Stories 2020 and his debut novel, Freedom Is a Feast, is set in Ch\u00e1vez-era Venezuela and was published in August by Little, Brown.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donate to LRTV<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Alejandro Puyana “Beyond betrayal.” Those are the words that Adelys Ferro, director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said in February, after the Trump Administration announced they would end temporary protected status (TPS) for almost […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,70],"tags":[80,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-14500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"category-latino-vote","9":"tag-immigration","10":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14500"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14531,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14500\/revisions\/14531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}