Since Donald Trump returned to power, more than 60 individuals have died while in the custody of or during encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This toll includes two Latino immigrants who died within the same week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. As these incidents mount, many Latinos have expressed growing concern that their background makes them targets of enforcement, a fear that reflects the current political climate.
However, this narrative often overlooks a critical reality: many of the officials executing these anti-immigrant operations are themselves Latino, bearing Hispanic surnames and sharing ties to the very communities they police. When it was revealed that the two agents responsible for the January killing of Alex Pretti were Hispanic, the public reaction was one of widespread shock. This surprise stems from a common, yet historically inaccurate, assumption that the Latino community is inherently opposed to restrictive immigration policies.
In reality, Latinos have long served as both targets of nativist sentiment and active participants in its enforcement. Today, Latinos represent a majority of border patrol officers and account for approximately 20% to 30% of ICE agents. This trend is not new; it is deeply rooted in American political history. For decades, Latino voters have frequently supported politicians and policies designed to tighten borders and target immigrant families, proving that reactionary politics can find significant traction within the community itself.
The roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the 1950s, when prominent Latino leaders backed campaigns like Operation Wetback, which aimed to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants and their citizen relatives. This support was often driven by fears regarding labor competition, as employers frequently leveraged migrant labor to suppress wages, break strikes, and undermine unions. This logic persisted through the 1960s and 1970s, with the United Farm Workers union occasionally treating undocumented workers as threats to their organizing efforts, sometimes even reporting them to authorities or conducting their own border patrols.
While the civil rights movement and the rise of Black Power later influenced Chicano activism—leading many to reject assimilationist impulses and the idea that they could be legally viewed as white—nativist undercurrents never fully disappeared. Anxieties regarding status, belonging, and the impact of migration on their own standing in society remained. For instance, during the 1994 California ballot initiative Proposition 187, which sought to restrict immigrant access to social services, polling indicated that nearly half of Latino voters considered supporting the measure, even though only about a quarter ultimately did.
This trend continued into the 21st century, as “Latinos for Trump” factions played a key role in the 2016 rise of the MAGA movement. By the 2024 election, Trump not only maintained this support but expanded it, particularly among Latino men and in heavily Latino border regions. The American right has increasingly shifted its focus away from purely biological notions of race toward a broader opposition to multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ rights, and liberalism. This shift has allowed the movement to incorporate figures of color, including Afro-Cuban Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio—a January 6 insurrectionist and Trump pardon recipient—and white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes, whose father is Mexican American.
For many, these movements offer a sense of inclusion and status, allowing participants to view themselves as defenders of order and tradition rather than as outsiders. While recent polling suggests a potential shift in Latino support away from the Republican party, the historical record indicates that Latino participation in immigration enforcement is not a paradox but a consistent, if complex, part of the American story. Understanding this history requires acknowledging these internal contradictions rather than dismissing them.
Eladio Bobadilla, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh and author ofDangerous Migration: Mexican Labor and the Fight for Immigrant Rightsnotes that every community contains such contradictions. This analysis was originally written for Zócalo Public Square and is republished here with permission. The report also notes that for decades, Latinos have joined the border patrol (and since it was established in 2003, ICE) in significant numbers.
