On a recent weekday afternoon, a group of Latino university students near the Southwestern border draped themselves in flags festooned with President Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, carried pro-Trump signs and set out to recruit new voters — like Victor Ibarra.
“This area is no longer just for Democrats,” Mr. Ibarra, an exuberant 20-year-old political science major, said as he joined their ranks and draped a MAGA flag around his neck. “A lot of people are changing the way they used to vote.”
So much has already happened at the dawn of the second Trump term that could resonate in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley border region: raids and deportations; the opening of a migrant internment camp at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the president’s attempt to end automatic citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil; tariffs threatened, then pulled back, on Mexican goods; and the U.S. military dispatched to the border.
All of that has only underscored a question that might have more political importance than any other in the near future: Does the rightward lurch of Hispanic working-class voters have staying power, or can Democrats win them back?
A new breed of Latino leaders is emerging in this once-solidly Democratic enclave to find the answer.
Alexis Uscanga, 21, who once idolized President Barack Obama, is typical of the Republicans asserting themselves at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in the border city of Edinburg, Texas.
“The Republican Party is here to stay,” he said.
Countering such youthful conservative energy is the likes of Representative Greg Casar, 35, a Democratic rising star in Washington, D.C., and whose district includes parts of Austin and San Antonio. He sees the turmoil both on the border and in the nation’s capital as a return ticket for Hispanic voters attracted by Mr. Trump’s appeals to the working class, and potentially repelled by the emergence of a billionaire, Elon Musk, as a force in the president’s government.
“Trump and Musk are shamelessly robbing working people’s tax dollars in plain sight,” said Mr. Casar, the newly elected chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in only his second House term. “Democrats can be the party of working-class people again if we fight tooth and nail against billionaire Republican corruption.”
Republican leaders along the Rio Grande have for years been courting socially conservative Latinos in the region’s mix of growing urban centers and rural ranch lands by preaching common ground on family values, border security, abortion and views about gender identity and roles.
“The Democratic Party doesn’t represent the values of people down here in the valley,” said Roberto Cantú Jr., chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, representing an area that includes Edinburg. “Our values are faith, family and freedom.”
No doubt, 2024 was a breakthrough moment in El Valle, as the area where Latinos are the majority is known, at least on the presidential level. Mr. Trump took 12 of the 14 counties along the border with Mexico, more than double the five in 2016. Eight of the top 10 Democratic counties that swung hardest toward Mr. Trump are within a short drive to Mexico. The area is where many local residents have cultural ties, perplexing political experts who assumed that Mr. Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations and his condemnation of illegal immigration would sour Latino voters.
“He talks like everyday people,” Mia Vela, 18, explained, capturing the appeal of Mr. Trump beyond policies and promises.
More confounding may be what happened down ballot, where many border-region Democrats managed to win tightly drawn districts, including Representatives Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar.
Robert W. Velez, a lecturer in the political science department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said that the new political reality along the border is clear: “Any social stigma about voting Republican has been lifted.”
Still, he added, whether Republicans will be able to retain their allure once Mr. Trump no longer leads the party remains to be seen.
“I mean, that’s the real question,” Mr. Velez said. “Once Trump is not on the ballot anymore, will it stick?”
Gary Groves, a longtime Republican who leads so-called Trump Trains, or convoys of supporters, in and around McAllen, said that the question would be decided by young people, like Mr. Uscanga.
Mr. Uscanga and his friends said they were up to the task, but as they canvassed the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley a recent day, resistance came quickly.
From a larger group of left-leaning voters gathered on an open field, Josselyn Chavez, 18, a freshman, approached his group and asked: “This is a question for all of you guys: Do you believe that Donald Trump is a good man, generally?”
Mr. Uscanga did not waste time. “He may not be the best man,” he said, “but I think he’s the man for the job.”
Ms. Chavez also wanted to know why the young Republicans opposed a woman’s right to an abortion, which is all but banned in Texas.
“Trump has been very clear that it should be up to the states,” Mr. Uscanga replied with a civilized smile. “In California, abortion is very popular over there. They should have that right in California, but in Texas it’s not as popular.”
Ms. Chavez signaled that she understood but walked away unconvinced.
“God gave us all free will. If we want to go ahead and get an abortion or turn from a boy to a girl, that’s our free will,” she said.
That exchange took place just as Mr. Trump was launching a blitz of initiatives that caught his rivals off guard, including the deployment of troops to the border, raids on undocumented migrants, the opening of a migrant detention camp in Guantánamo Bay and the unleashing of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash government funding.
Still, José Menéndez, a Democratic state senator from San Antonio, said the party needed to lift up its traditional working-class messaging, without ignoring marginalized groups.
“We need to go back and focus on the on the kitchen table issues that concern and bother every family,” Mr. Menendez said. “We are the party of the working class.”
Sylvia Bruni, the leader of the Democratic Party of Webb County, which includes Laredo, agreed that the party needed to go beyond abortion and gender issues if it wanted to win back socially conservative Latinos.
“The Republicans kept telling voters: I promise you, eggs are going to be down to $1 a dozen,” Ms. Bruni said. “Economics is what did us in.”
Dresden Sanchez, a 19-year-old freshman at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, identifies with the left end of the Democratic spectrum, but he noted, “When I went to vote I saw a lot of signs from Republicans that said: The price of groceries are going to go down if you vote for me.”
“I think we need stuff like that,” he said, “focus on how policies are going to change your life. I think people will vote for Democrats again if they feel like they will do things to change their lives.”
As far as Mr. Uscanga knows, his family always voted for Democrats; doing so was ingrained in the culture, in part because of the Mexican American civil rights movement. “My parents always just voted for anyone who was a Democrat,” he said.
He was in middle school when Mr. Trump ran the first time. He was taught at home and in the news that he consumed that Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric meant that the man did not like Hispanics, he said.
“I just couldn’t believe that he was a candidate for president,” he recalled.
He didn’t meet a Trump supporter until his freshman year of high school in Harligen, Texas. “Why were they being so supportive?” he remembered asking himself. “I wanted to keep an open mind.”
He became convinced that Mr. Trump supported legal immigration and also wanted to secure the border from dangerous elements, a nuance he had not heard at home.
At the same time, his parents flourished, starting their small business and buying a new home and a new truck during Mr. Trump’s first term. The Biden administration was a turning point. He came to agree with Mr. Trump’s assessment that Mr. Biden was too soft on immigration enforcement and had fumbled the economic recovery after the Covid pandemic.
He turned 18 during the 2022 midterms and broke with his family by voting for Republicans. Then others in his family followed suit.
When his father “came through and said, ‘I’m not going to vote Democrat ever again,’ I was like, Wow,” he recalled. “I knew the valley was going to go for Trump.”
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