The Latinos who used their vote to punish Trump over ICE: ‘I voted for all those who cannot’

A ring, another ring, and Eduardo Daboin-Rall’s anxious voice can be heard from the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas, where he has already spent 20 months since being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “What is James Talarico doing? What else are the news saying? Have you all already gone out to vote?” He wants to know everything; he asks about everything. That’s how last week went, calling his wife Judy Maldonado-Rall so she would keep him informed of every detail of the election that wrested control of Congress from the Trump administration — an outcome some experts are already calling a revolution in U.S. politics.For many, this November 3 was not only a vote against the high cost of living, healthcare access or the war in Iran, but also a protest vote against the anti-immigrant policies that friends, parents, neighbors and partners have suffered. They went to the polls as if to take out, at the ballot box, the suffering they have endured over the past two years.Maldonado-Rall, 48, has always been able to vote because she was born in El Paso, Texas, but never before had she found so much meaning in going to the polls. “It wasn’t something so important to me, until I saw so many injustices against migrants,” she says. Among them, her husband, whom agents one day detained and tried to send to the mega-prison CECOT in El Salvador, along with more than 200 Venezuelans like him.Since then, Maldonado-Rall’s life has withered; she says it has been “horrible.” She has had to drive six hours on visitation days from her home in El Paso to see and touch her husband for a couple of hours. The detention has also strained her finances due to the costs of calls from the center and the money for commissaries — the food to ease her husband’s hunger in confinement.That is why the day Maldonado-Rall first went to a polling place this November, it was really to cast a protest vote against her husband’s detention, against the detention of other migrants she has met during this time, and for herself, who has also paid the price of a predatory immigration policy.“I told myself: no, this is affecting me personally, my family. It can’t be that so many people are going through these things,” she says.By the time she received one of Daboin-Rall’s last calls from the detention center, Texas had already turned into the blue territory it hadn’t been for three decades, with a Democratic ticket led by Talarico for the Senate and Gina Hinojosa for the state’s governorship.“I voted for all those who cannot represent themselves”Latinos turned out on Wednesday to take over the polls: across the country, in majority-Hispanic counties the electorate tilted roughly 25 points in favor of Democratic Senate candidates on average. Among all racial groups, they led the shift in the House of Representatives, delivering Democrats support that was 28 percentage points higher than in 2024, when they entrusted their vote to Donald Trump and his Republicans.Two years after that election, Latino families have had to quit their jobs for fear of a raid, hide in their homes, mourn ICE deaths in their communities or watch their husbands, children or friends get deported. According to UnidosUS, 90% of Latino voters support a balanced immigration system that includes a pathway to citizenship for long-term residents, and many also reject how their community has been treated.“The message from Latino voters was clear: no party or elected official can assume our vote is guaranteed, especially if they do not clearly prioritize defending and improving the living conditions of our families,” says Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, an empowerment organization for the community. “Latinos saw how these inhumane public policies aim to create terror and uncertainty, not more safety.”The fact that the Trump administration underestimated the fastest-growing electorate in recent times was evident. According to UnidosUS, Democratic support among Hispanics returned to historical averages, though not reaching the levels seen during the Obama era.Mexican-American Paloma Vázquez Barrientos, 24, was already eligible to vote when she started working a few years ago at a solar panel plant in Dalton, a city in northwest Georgia where more than half the residents are Latino. She had never been so aware of how her coworkers at the plant — Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans — suffered from living in the shadows as undocumented people. So when she went to the polls this election day, she voted for several reasons: first, to secure political representation for minorities in Dalton; second, for all her migrant friends who cannot vote like she can and who suffer raids or ICE harassment.“I, who have the privilege of voting, wanted my vote to show who lives here in Dalton,” she said. “I voted for all those who cannot represent themselves that way, so they can see we are here, that we exist.” She also applauded with pride how Keisha Lance Bottoms won to become the first Black woman elected governor in the United States.Abolish ICE, is it possible?After nearly two years apart, Judy Maldonado-Rall has begun to feel optimism about seeing her husband free. “Hope is not lost,” she says.After the “bluenami,” the question many migrant families are asking is what course immigration policy will take coming from the White House. On Tuesday, as the U.S. map was turning blue, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin dampened the national mood: “Deportations will continue,” he warned on X. However, Trump spoke with Fox News Tuesday night — when his defeat was nearly certain — and softened his tone, saying he might work with Democrats on immigration.Right after winning the election, the Democratic members of the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees DHS, sent Mullin a message on X: “@SecMullinDHS, clear your agenda,” they wrote, as a warning to the immigration authorities. The big question now is whether Democrats, with a congressional majority, can intervene in DHS’s agenda and thus in ICE operations.Although the multimillion-dollar budget to fund ICE has already been approved through 2029 and Congress would have limited capacity to control that agency, Luis Miranda, a Democratic strategist and former DHS official who served as principal deputy assistant secretary for Public Affairs during the Biden administration, believes Congress can ensure oversight of the department.“Part of what Congress can do is insist on what they authorized, which is law enforcement, to see whether it is being followed and used correctly,” Miranda says. “What has been seen so far is that DHS has operated outside what Congress authorized. Congress can force the production of documentation of what they have done, since we’ve only learned of many of those memos because someone leaked them to the press.”In the short term, Miranda says, there could be changes such as combating the abuse of prolonged detention, the way agents treat people on the streets, banning the use of stun gloves, banning agents from wearing masks, or prohibiting the use of less-lethal weapons at close range — “which have already cost several people their eyes.”These measures, however, may not be enough for many. Much of the slate of candidates elected Wednesday campaigned on a promise to abolish ICE. Miranda believes that, in the near term, that proposal “is not viable.” “The idea of abolishing ICE is not possible; what’s needed is to fix and dilute the abuse. Voters don’t want Hispanics to continue being treated the way they have been, but they do want border security, and they want people with criminal records to be detained,” Miranda says.A new major concern emerged at the last minute with the recent appointment of Stephen Miller as the White House chief of staff — the same man who has been the architect of the administration’s tough hunting-and-deportation policy. His rise has sparked fear that, on the contrary, immigration policy will intensify even more.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition