Trump demonizes immigrants. So why is he winning so many Latino votes?

At the time, García felt like he was part of a minority in South Texas. MAGA was a sort of counterculture among Latinos, a tiny band of provocateurs who enjoyed pissing off the dominant Democrats. But beneath the surface, a seismic shift was underway. When the results were counted on election night in November 2020, García was as shocked as everyone else to discover that Republican turnout in Starr County had nearly quadrupled from 2016. Joe Biden still won, but barely — 52% to Trump’s 47%. Trump had gained more ground in Starr than in any other county in America.

Since then, political analysts have been questioning whether Democrats are losing their long-standing advantage among Latino voters. How had a candidate who once called Mexicans “rapists” done so well in a Mexican American county? In July, before Biden exited the race, polls found his support among Latinos had fallen below 50%. And even since Kamala Harris won the nomination, polling has indicated she’s likely to win no more than 58% of Latino voters — a far cry from what Democrats used to muster. That’s especially significant this year because Trump doesn’t need to win a majority of Latino support to retake the White House. If he can peel off enough of the 36 million Latino voters, especially in hotly contested swing states such as Arizona and Nevada, it could prove to be the margin of victory.

The machine politics compelled Treviño to turn away from the Democrats. He was also prodded by his wife, Toni, a chemist turned lawyer who moved to Starr from Houston. As an outsider and self-identified libertarian, she was shocked by the county’s rampant cronyism. “Why are you a Democrat?” she asked her husband. “You’re a hard worker. You’re very conservative in your values.” The Treviños became Republicans, and today Toni serves as the chair of the Starr County GOP.

While the worst instances of machine politics were eradicated by the 1980s, many old-timers like Treviño remain deeply suspicious of the Democratic Party. In South Texas counties where Democrats have controlled local politics for generations, Republicans can offer themselves as the party of something new. And polls indicate the same shift taking place across the country: Latinos are much more likely to see Trump, rather than Harris, as the candidate offering a chance at major change.

If any place embodies the dual identity among Latinos in Starr County, it’s the Rancho Cafe in the tiny town of Roma. On the outside, the restaurant has the wooden facade of an Old Western saloon, complete with a covered wagon in the dirt parking lot. Inside, however, it’s classic Tex-Mex. Traditional Mexican dresses hang for sale along the walls of the café, and the servers greet you in Spanish.

At lunchtime, Aliriam Perez sits sipping a bowl of caldo. Both her parents are from Miguel de Alemán, a Mexican city across the border that would blend in seamlessly with Roma if it weren’t for the heavily patrolled river separating them. Perez grew up mostly on the US side, though she crossed over frequently to spend time with family. Her mother was adamant that Perez never lose touch with her culture — she didn’t want her daughter to become “pocha,” Americanized. Though Perez at times rebelled against her mother’s wishes, at 34 she’s come to appreciate the importance of her Mexican heritage. Now that she has two boys of her own, she’s raising them bilingual. “It’s part of their history,” she says. “It’s where they come from.”

Growing up, Perez wasn’t very political. But that changed when she married a local police officer. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Perez was deeply offended by the way Democrats supported calls to “abolish the police.” It felt like an affront to her husband, who was “out there putting himself in danger,” she says. Breaking with her mother, who believes that it’s crucial for Mexican Americans to vote against Trump, Perez began volunteering with the local Republican Party. As she sees it, a vote for “law and order” Trump is a way to both honor and protect her husband and other first responders.

In one recent poll, only 9% of Latino voters cited immigration as their top priority.

Democrats maintain a significant advantage among Latinos like Perez’s mother, first-generation immigrants who speak Spanish as their first language. But that advantage weakens among the second and third generations — not because American-born Latinos like Perez are more distant from their heritage but because they’ve started to prioritize other issues in the voting booth. The top two concerns among Latinos this year are the same as those for their fellow Americans: the economy and healthcare. In one recent poll, only 9% of Latino voters cited immigration as their top priority.

Starr’s economy is propped up not only by law enforcement, including the Border Patrol, but also by the oil and gas industry. During García’s childhood, he recalls, his immigrant father would make the long drive out to the Permian Basin in West Texas, where he worked as pipe fitter. Oil production has grown under Biden, and Harris says she has no plans to ban fracking. But to García, it’s obvious that Republicans are far more keen to expand drilling. Voting for Trump, as he sees it, is his best bet to keep his dad employed.

To be sure, “oil worker” is not a big part of Latino identity in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Democrats, in fact, have long played to Latino voters by emphasizing the discrimination they face in the energy industry and law enforcement. But that appeal is beginning to lose its appeal. Perez says she knows racism exists in America — a white worker in an Alabama Dairy Queen once refused to serve her because she’s Mexican. But she doesn’t see discrimination as the province of any one political party. “There are Democrats who are racist and there are Republicans who are racist,” she says. Latinos still tell pollsters they consider the Democratic Party more welcoming to them than Republicans. But there are signs the political cohesion of “Latinidad” is beginning to fracture. Across the country, Latino Republicans say they feel more able to wear their politics on their sleeve. When people give them a hard time about voting for Trump, they’ve adopted a proud and defiant comeback. “¿Y qué?” they reply — “So what?”

In his home on his ranch along the northern edge of Starr County, Rick Guerra keeps one room as a sort of museum of his time in the Army: his vest from his days as a tank gunner during the invasion of Iraq, his boots from his deployment in Afghanistan. On one wall, there’s a collection of medals and challenge coins. As a teenager, Guerra helped his father and brothers build this very house. After he retired from the Army, he moved in with his wife and two children.

“Trump puts the country first. He puts God first — he’s for border control,” Reyes says. Next to him, an off-duty Border Patrol agent who has joined the Trump Train nods in agreement.

Local Democrats and Republicans agree that the trains gave Trump an electoral advantage in 2020. During the pandemic, Democrats — following strict instructions from the Biden campaign to avoid spreading the virus — stopped knocking on doors and focused instead on their digital strategy. Republicans, meanwhile, kept staging the Trump Trains, knocking on doors, and throwing well-attended barbeques and “asadas.” Democrats have become accustomed to hemorrhaging support from working-class white voters. But now it’s clear that more and more Latinos — who are overrepresented in the working class, especially in South Texas — are flocking to the Republicans. Being Latino, it appears, no longer dictates how someone will vote.

The Trump Train being held is small, but Reyes already has plans to hold larger rallies all across the border lands. This first train, he says, “will be like the trailer before the movie.” But it’s hard to hear him. Every few minutes, passing trucks honk their horns, their drivers waving out their windows at the sea of MAGA flags blanketing the dry, thorny landscape that once belonged to Democrats.

Jack Herrera is a freelance journalist who reports on how immigration and demographic change impacts individual lives. He was previously a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and senior editor at Texas Monthly.