As President Donald Trump cracks down on immigration programs, some voters on the left are taking out their frustrations not only on his administration — but also on Latinos who supported him.
In Miami-Dade County, which is majority Hispanic, 55% of voters favored Trump. In Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S., Trump won with 61% of votes. In Hialeah, a Cuban stronghold, he got 76%.
Some progressive voters accuse Latinos who voted for Trump of betraying other immigrants who now face legal uncertainty and deportation under the administration's aggressive enforcement of immigration laws.
"I feel that a lot of progressives kind of look at us immigrants... like we're the laughing stock right now. Like, 'Oh my gosh, you supported Trump so much and now look where you guys are,'" said Andreina Kissane, a Venezuelan-American and three-time Trump voter. She backs his economic approach and plan to deport criminal immigrants to ensure national security.
What Democrats don’t understand, in Kissane’s view, is that Latino voters have worked too hard to be in the U.S. to get wrapped up in a party she believes doesn’t prioritize giving opportunities to climb socially and economically.
" And for them to laugh, it's just like... you should actually reflect on what has happened the past 10 years to see [if you are] in the right path," she told WLRN.
READ MORE: 'It's not personal': Trump's deportation efforts find support among South Florida Latinos
Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, a cultural context strategist and CEO of the social impact agency We Are Más, says she has seen progressive Democrats become apathetic to Latinos' political motivations.
She recounted texting with a friend — whom she described as a Bernie Sanders supporter and fifth-generation Hispanic — about the shortcomings Democrats face when communicating with Latino voters, and the generational trauma many immigrants carry from leaving homelands like Cuba and Venezuela, which are run by repressive authoritarian regimes.
“This is what he said when we started talking about this. He wrote, ‘They need to be grateful to be in America and not bring their sh** here,’” Pérez-Verdía said. “And that hurt.”
It parallels some of the rhetoric spewed by right-wing individuals urging immigrants to “get out of their country” and “go back to where you came from,” she said.
"It's very, very disappointing that people within the party that's supposed to be the party of the minorities, the party of hardworking people are practically saying that in a way, that we're less," Pérez-Verdía said.
Pérez-Verdía is Colombian-American and registered with No Party Affiliation, or NPA, but in the past has been a registered Democrat and worked on Democratic campaigns.
“A lot of progressives aren't as progressive as they make themselves out to be,” said Dario Moreno, a politics and international relations professor at Florida International University. “There's always a hypocrisy about being open to diversity as long as that diversity fits stereotypes. And when they don't fit stereotypes, people react with old, ethnic and racial slurs.”
Why Democrats failed to capture Latinos
Some exit polls put Latinos’ support for Trump in the 2024 election as high as 45%. That’s up 10% from the 2020 presidential campaign when former President Joe Biden defeated Trump.
A new poll released late last month by the the nonprofit UnidosUS, a large Democratic-leaning Latino advocacy group, found that nearly half of Latino voters feel the Democratic party doesn’t care about them and is even hostile towards the Latino community.
Experts have long argued that the Democratic Party keeps losing Latino voters, in part, because of branding.
They say the messages and terminology that float in the party trigger political trauma for many Latino immigrants who can only vote by law after becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Symbols that in an American context are associated with social justice movements and equality mean something completely different in the context of Latin American history.
The raised fist, for example, isn’t a sign of strength, perseverance and Civil Rights among Latino immigrants. It’s closely connected to left and right extremism in the Hispanic diaspora. The term "progressive" in the U.S. signifies liberal politics, but in Spanish, progresista is charged with the extreme left-wing rule that drove many Latin American countries into ruins.
The term "Democratic Socialist" also triggers the trauma of having to flee socialism in their home countries. It doesn’t help that Vermont Sen. Sanders, a former presidential candidate, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, of New York, both of whom are popular leaders within the Democratic party, identify as “Democratic Socialists.”
Socialism is one of the most alarming words to a significant number Latino immigrants now voting in the United States.
“They lost everything to that word,” We Are Más's Pérez-Verdía said.
Many Latinos are turned off by the Democratic party, she added, because of political leaders who use these labels. “And then you question why we're leaving or attack many of us for leaving because we think that you have the wrong messaging — and it’s not uniting our communities," she said.
One of Democrats’ center-piece messages last election cycle was, “Democracy is at stake.” If Latinos watched the democracies in their home countries crumble, why didn’t the message resonate?
“ Democracy is a very strong word. It's an important word, especially for Hispanics who have lost it,” Pérez-Verdía said. But “it's not just about having a message about democracy,” it’s also about consistency in messaging. Democrats’ reverence for democracy during the campaign was inconsistent — to some Latinos — with the symbols associated with socialism.
The Republican gameplan
Eduardo Gamarra, a politics and international relations professor at Florida International University and a national expert on the Latino vote, polled the Latino perspective across the U.S. in October 2024. Among the findings: 42% of Florida Latinos changed their party affiliation from Democratic to Republican in the last year. That was also true for 30% of the group nationwide.
The shift to the right — to Trumpism — isn’t surprising, said Gamarra.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump engaged with South Florida’s Latino voters with rallies, town halls and roundtable discussions in Doral, not only reaching Latinos locally, but nationwide.
Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, didn’t visit Florida during her presidential campaign. Her campaign concentrated on the seven swing states, paying for almost no TV advertising here because the state was not considered winnable.
Republicans “spent money and time” reaching Latino voters in Florida and other swing states, Gamarra said. “And [Democrats] entirely forgot about Florida. They said, ‘We've already lost Florida. Why should we even waste any money in Florida?’”
“ There is a way to communicate and instead of blaming the victim, instead of blaming Hispanics, [Democrats] should blame themselves and figure out a way to talk to Hispanics.”Dario Moreno, professor at Florida International University.
Republicans also tapped into Latino’s trauma of exile. By accusing the Democrats of being communists, Trump was able to capture attention and ultimately support from Latino voters, especially in South Florida, where a large sum of Latinos are first generation immigrants. And if they aren't, the stories and emotional weight of exile still resonate among U.S.-born descendants. Also, many Latinos have conservative beliefs that align to the GOP’s messaging of religious and traditional family values.
Immigration policies also represent a big weight in the Latino voting bloc — and has been the reason so many criticize Latino Trump support. To critics, it doesn’t make sense that a leader bypassing rule of law to achieve a mass deportation agenda gets support from the community he’s targeting — even though the vast majority of the nation's 63 million Latinos are here legally as green card holders or as U.S. citizens.
But there’s an important variable in that equation: sense of security. Many Latinos fled violence and unrest in their homelands and don’t want to see it brought here. When Trump says he’ll deport criminals, that’s a positive sign for Latinos who saw their countries become crime-ridden. In Gamarra’s 2024 poll, almost 21% of Florida Latinos said border security and illegal immigration were the main threat to national security.
However, the Latino-Trump alliance may be on shaky ground. Since Trump began targeting programs like Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, some are questioning the support they gave Trump. TPS allows people from certain countries, including Venezuela and Nicaragua, to live and work in the U.S. but doesn’t provide a long-term path to citizenship.
“ So what we're hearing now in the community is this sense of the great betrayal,” Gamarra said. “This is the great betrayal by the Republicans on the Venezuelans” who assumed, “ perhaps naively,” that when Trump spoke about deportations, he meant only Tren de Aragua gang members.
‘There are always going to be scapegoats’
The top issues for Latino voters this past election cycle were inflation, jobs and the economy, according to Gamarra’s survey.
The economy is a particular powerful voting motivator for Latinos, FIU's Moreno explained, because of the opportunity for social mobility. “It's all about the American dream — it's all about opportunities to climb the economic ladder and move from working class to middle class,” he said.
Democrats don’t bat that message enough, he said, and over-rely on a playbook that doesn’t resonate with the economic needs and aspirations of hard-working Latinos.
“Trying to explain defeat by virtue of the fact that Hispanics voted for Republicans, I think it's incorrect, but it's also condescending,” Gamarra said. “ In trying to explain defeat, there are always going to be scapegoats.”
Moreno wants Democrats to update their playbook.
“ My line to Democrats is, there is a way to communicate and instead of blaming the victim, instead of blaming Hispanics,” Moreno said, “they should blame themselves and figure out a way to talk to Hispanics.”
