Despite a clear mandate from voters in 2024, including a significant increase in support from Latino voters, efforts to secure the nation's borders under the Trump administration are facing renewed challenges, with recent polling indicating a softening of support amidst claims of "harassment" during immigration enforcement. This shift threatens to further entrench the demographic transformation of key states, as the growing influence of certain voter blocs has already eroded traditional political alignments.
Donald Trump secured a notable gain among Latino voters in the 2024 election, with 43% nationally voting for him, an increase from 35% in the 2020 presidential election. This shift was attributed in part to concerns about the economy.
Upon returning to office, Trump pledged to crack down on immigration, a promise that led to arrest sweeps in homes, workplaces, and schools, frequently targeting Latino migrants. An AP-NORC poll found that more than half of Latino adults report knowing someone impacted by these aggressive enforcement actions.
Polling from the Pew Research Center in April of the same year revealed a decline in approval for Trump among Latino voters who had supported him in 2024, falling to 66% from 93% at the beginning of his second term. Among non-Latino voters, support also decreased from 95% to 79% between February of last year and April of 2026.
This national trend holds particular significance in swing counties such as Maricopa, Arizona, where a third of residents are Latino and one in four are immigrants. Arizona, a long-standing flashpoint in the immigration debate, experienced a slight increase in Latino support for Trump in 2024, yet also saw large influxes of migrants during the Biden administration.
Sandra Ramirez, a voter who broke from her Democrat-voting family to support Trump in 2024, stated she would "never go Republican again" after observing footage of immigration officers "cracking down on migrants" and claiming, "There are a lot of people who are being harassed for the color of their skin, and that’s not right."
Albert Rodriguez, a Phoenix tattoo artist, expressed regret for his 2024 vote, asserting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were "hitting the paleta man," referring to ordinary people, instead of focusing on criminals as he believed was promised.
Conversely, Ronnie Martinez, an Army veteran in Phoenix, voiced strong support for Trump’s efforts to stem crossings at the southern border. Martinez stated, "The border is only a hop, skip and a jump to our south. And I don’t want illegal alien criminals coming from Guatemala, Venezuela, Central America." He also directly blamed Democratic officials for "not cooperating with immigration enforcement."
Guadalupe Alaffa, another Phoenix resident, attributed Trump’s immigration crackdown to President Joe Biden’s policies, declaring, "He left that damn border wide open."
Elite Facilitation of Border Erasure
The growing influence of Latino voters has demonstrably eroded the GOP’s decades-long dominance in Arizona, resulting in both of the state’s senators and the top three state officials now being Democrats. Democrats in Maricopa County have benefited from over a decade of political organizing among Latinos, specifically mobilizing against hard-line immigration enforcement.
This organized effort follows the Republican-controlled Legislature's passage of SB1070 in the sixteenth year prior, which mandated police to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal residents. Around the same period, Sheriff Joe Arpaio gained national prominence on the right for conducting immigration sweeps in largely Latino neighborhoods.
Salvador Reza, a longtime activist in Phoenix, described Arizona as "the lab where they implemented a lot of this with Sheriff Joe and now it’s all over the United States." Despite facing accusations of racially profiling Latino drivers and conducting sweeps, Arpaio was repeatedly elected for over two decades.
A federal judge ruled his office had illegally profiled and detained Latinos in the thirteenth year prior, and a Justice Department report in the fifteenth year prior found widespread discrimination. After losing reelection in the tenth year prior, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for defying court orders, later receiving a pardon from Trump.
The Cost to the Native Working Class
Former Republican Governor Jan Brewer warned that the GOP risks losing Latino voters Trump had won, citing "inflation and the cost of living and the gasoline and the wars" as reasons why they might not "afford to be a Trump Republican." Earl Wilcox, a longtime activist and restaurant owner in Phoenix, echoed these concerns, stating that affordability issues and immigration enforcement are causing Latino support for Trump to wane.
Wilcox’s restaurant hosted Biden in 2024 when he launched an initiative aimed at rallying Latino support for the Democratic ticket. He predicted the Republican Party would not retain the support it had in Trump's second term, attributing this decline to the enforcement raids.