Over the weekend, the Trump administration conducted widespread immigration raids across the greater Los Angeles area. Targeting businesses, schools, and homes, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was quickly met with resistance and protests from the residents of Los Angeles. Despite widely peaceful and non-violent protests, the Trump administration escalated the situation by federalizing over 2,000 California National Guard troops – against Governor Gavin Newsom’s wishes – and ordered 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles for “de-escalation.” For many Latinos across the country, these immigration raids are personal. In November 2024, Trump famously made inroads with the Latino community as a result of his promises to improve the economy. But even then, Latinos had already been expressing disapproval over Trump’s immigration policies and tactics for some time. 

In collaboration with UnidosUS, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Voces Unidas, and Climate Power en Acción, BSP Research fielded a bipartisan poll that highlighted widespread concern over the deportation of lawful residents and even citizens. The results of the survey suggest that Latino voters have been upset over the Trump Administration’s actions on immigration, and fears in the community had already been growing amid the Trump Administration’s deportation of individuals without criminal records, his invocation of the 1789 Alien Enemy Act, revocations of student visas, and the deportation of three young children; one with cancer. The Supreme Court has demonstrated an inability to enforce their own rulings, and the Trump administration has outright ignored court orders in controversial and notable cases, such as that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Findings from the The First 100 Day Hispanic Voter Survey show that in April, sixty percent of voters believe things in the United States are going in the wrong direction and immigration reform was already among the most important issues for Latinos.

Many of the concerns over immigration highlighted in the survey have become a reality over the course of this administration. Over half of Latino voters in the survey said they opposed the administration’s attempts to deport non-citizen college student activists and professors who speak out against US policies. The poll showed that sixty percent of Latino voters opposed the enforcement of immigration laws in public schools, with thirty-two percent of Latino voters noting that children are missing classes because their parents fear being arrested at their child’s school. Forty-three percent of Latino voters noted that people fear that immigration authorities will arrest them even if they’re U.S. citizens or have legal status. Over one in three stated that employers in their community have lost workers because people fear they’ll be arrested if they go to work, and thirty percent said they have noticed that people aren’t going out to eat or shop because they’re afraid of immigration enforcement.The racist undertones and military escalation that the Trump administration has used to evoke fear, discrimination, and anger amongst Latinos can be seen as having detrimental effects on the wellbeing and success of their community.

Finding legal paths to citizenship for children and long-standing immigrants living in the country continues to be strongly supported by the Latino community. The majority of Latino voters cited providing paths to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long time as their top policy priority, and fifty-one percent say they want the government to prioritize providing paths to citizenship for undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children. Sixty-two percent oppose the elimination of the right of citizenship for children born to undocumented parents. Unlike Trump’s highly anti-immigrant agenda, Latino voters seem more interested in creating policies which protect the rights of immigrants in the U.S., they prefer that the administration defend the border from crime and drugs, and they are open to asylum seekers and refugees. However, Trump’s administrative actions stray away from these policies, instead choosing to arrest hard-working members of the community at Home Depot’s and targeting historical Latino centers of integration like the garment district.

With Trump’s second term only taking flight, his immigration policies will undoubtedly continue to be one of his priorities and raise concerns among Latinos who supported him, like that of State Sen. Ileana Garcia who was the co-founder of the Trump-supporting group “Latinas for Trump” and is, ironically, the Vice Chair of the Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs. As Trump continues to heighten ICE activity across the country, detain migrants without due process, kidnap students and innocent civilians off of the streets, and ambush day laborers hard at work, it is eerily clear who Trump’s immigration policies are targeting, and Latinos are not happy about it.