Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York brandished a court order outside an immigration detention facility in Manhattan last month, demanding to check on the migrants’ living conditions.
As he prepared to enter, Mr. Espaillat ran through the ways that fellow Democratic members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had tried to support undocumented immigrants — whether by backing legislation or by putting themselves in harm’s way.
“We’ve been teaching the Democratic caucus how to fight this,” he said.
Mr. Espaillat is one of four Latino House Democrats trying to fight off primary challenges from younger opponents and from the left — including some from fellow Latinos — at a time when they say they are leading the charge in combating President Trump’s deportation push and the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of those Democrats, Representative Sylvia Garcia of Texas, is facing a competitive primary on Tuesday.
On Monday, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee injected new urgency into the incumbents’ efforts to hold their seats, announcing an effort called “Luchadores” aimed at defending the four key members. The committee, BOLD PAC, argues that Latino Democrats in Congress have been crucial in fighting ICE, and that their identities and experiences are especially important to have in Congress when so many Latinos in America are afraid of being detained or deported.
But their challengers say the incumbents have simply not been fighting aggressively enough. As Democrats contend with an anti-establishment backlash and accusations that their party has fallen out of touch with everyday people, a wide array of incumbents face primary opponents this year. At least one progressive, Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, has already scored an upset victory against an establishment Democrat in a primary race this year.
In some of these races, as in many others, the challengers accuse the incumbents of being ineffective, of upholding a status quo that hinders the working class and of hoovering up donations from corporate interests and through groups like AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying organization.
“When you get to Washington and you are bought and sold by corporate PACs and right-wing lobbies, you don’t have to actually fight with the urgency that your community demands,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group. It helped vault Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Congress and is backing two of the challengers to Latino incumbents this year.
Aside from Mr. Espaillat, who serves as chair of the caucus, and Ms. Garcia, the other Latino House Democrats facing primary challenges include Representatives Rob Menendez of New Jersey and Jimmy Gomez of California.
BOLD PAC has already spent $204,000 on mail advertising defending Ms. Garcia, whose primary election is on Tuesday. The committee has amassed an $11.2 million war chest so far this year across its aggregated committees. BOLD PAC has $6.8 million in cash on hand, it said.
In 2024, the PAC spent $485,000 defending Mr. Menendez against a different primary challenger, and $3.3 million overall backing the caucus’s incumbents that year. It spent $2.8 million to help incumbents in 2022.
This year, the four incumbents face varying degrees of competitiveness in their challenges, and the races have unique quirks. Ms. Garcia, for instance, is running in a new Houston-area district after Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map last year in an effort to oust several Democratic incumbents.
Much of her Latino constituency was drawn into a different district that is expected to become an easy pickup for Republicans. Ms. Garcia is now facing Jarvis Johnson, a Democratic former state representative who is Black, in a heavily Black district. He has argued that Ms. Garcia struggled to engage voters in her old district. Last month, The Houston Chronicle described Ms. Garcia’s political career as being “in serious jeopardy,” though a poll later found her leading Mr. Johnson by double digits.
In an interview, Ms. Garcia said that she was optimistic about her chances but concerned about the contest — given the newness of the district — and that she was campaigning until the very last moment.
A loss, she said, would mean that the three million Latinos in the Houston region would no longer have “someone that looks like them, that shares their values, their language, their culture, their heritage.”
In New Jersey, Mr. Menendez fended off a serious competitor two years ago, running in the shadow of the case against his father, Bob Menendez, the former senator who was later convicted on bribery and corruption charges. Now the younger Mr. Menendez faces Mussab Ali, a progressive former member of the Jersey City Board of Education whose campaign is backed by Jamaal Bowman, the former New York congressman who was part of the left-wing “Squad.”
Last month, Mr. Menendez emerged from an immigration detention center in Newark called Delaney Hall looking drained after hours of meeting with immigrants and checking on their legal situations and living conditions.
“Delaney Hall is set up to break people,” he said. “It’s difficult to comprehend why we collectively allow this to continue, and it’s infuriating.”
Mr. Menendez said he had been fighting Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts for more than a year.
“What has he done?” Mr. Menendez said of Mr. Ali. “He talks and he’ll put out Instagram videos — what has he actually done?”
Mr. Ali responded that he has been “on the ground educating immigrant residents and business owners on their rights,” and that Mr. Menendez “didn’t say ‘Abolish ICE’ until we forced it into the race.”
In Los Angeles, Mr. Gomez faced a tough re-election bid in 2024 against a progressive candidate who earned 44 percent of the vote. An AIPAC-tied group spent money defending Mr. Gomez, support that his half-dozen primary opponents this time around hope will drag him down at a time when many Democrats have turned against Israel over the war in Gaza.
One challenger, Angela Gonzales-Torres, who has the backing of Justice Democrats, said Mr. Gomez had moved far too slowly in combating ICE — a claim BOLD PAC denies — and in holding workshops for immigrants to learn their legal rights.
“We need someone in office that feels and acts on the urgency of this moment,” Ms. Gonzales-Torres said. “People are calling some Democrats ‘do-nothing Democrats’ — he is one of them.”
Ms. Gonzales-Torres, an activist whose father was deported to Mexico over a decade ago, said the primary battle was less about identity and more about the working class versus the establishment.
“More than the fact that both Gomez and I are Latinos, this is about real representation and respect for our people and who we are fighting for,” she said.
It’s a similar argument made by Mr. Espaillat, just in reverse. In New York, he, too, faces a younger Latina challenger backed by Justice Democrats, Darializa Avila Chevalier.
“It’s not just being Hispanic or young — you’ve got to know the district,” Mr. Espaillat said, listing off various demographic groups in his diverse Harlem region. “And I think I know that district better than anybody else in New York City.”
Mr. Espaillat said he empathized with voters’ desire for new voices. But, he said, “I am a new voice.”
“I’m the first Dominican American elected to Congress, and the first formerly undocumented member of Congress,” he added.
He pointed to his insurgent bona fides: unsuccessful runs more than a decade ago against Charles Rangel, a Black former congressman, and an eventual victory over Mr. Rangel’s handpicked successor — all of which irked the Congressional Black Caucus. (It is now backing Mr. Espaillat.)
Ms. Avila Chevalier, a Ph.D. student and organizer who helped lead protests against the war in Gaza at Columbia University, said that Mr. Espaillat’s acceptance of money from AIPAC-tied groups and corporate PACs undercut his stance as a fighter.
“The incumbent, even to this day, has not said ‘Abolish ICE’ — he’s been saying ‘dismantle,’” Ms. Avila Chevalier said. “I’m not even clear what that means — it sounds like reform. This is not an institution that can be reformed.”
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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