Voters overwhelmingly re-elected former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
Over a week after what many political pundits labeled the most consequential election in the history of the United States, many American citizens want to know what happens next?
In 2024, President-elect Donald Trump made inroads with Latino voters.
But now many in the Latino community fear that loved-ones could face exile from the country if Trump makes good on his mass deportation promise, although some believe that the new Trump administration will only go after undocumented criminals.
Trump’s new border czar Tom Homan vowed to label Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and “take them out.”
Homan added, “The criminal cartels in Mexico know President Trump is going to pay a lot of attention to them.
“Under President Trump, there is no catch and release; there is no fraudulent asylum claims.
“You are either going to remain in Mexico or be in detention. You won’t come across the border and be released and flown to the city of choice at free taxpayer’s expense.”
But what will the cost be for immigrants already in America, legally and illegally?
Kristin Etter, Director of Policy and Legal Services at the Texas Immigration Legal Council, said many in the Latino community are apprehensive of what will happen in January “because it threatens immigrant communities across our country, not just people who are undocumented, but people who are in mixed status families.”
Additionally, Etter said that if history is any indication, the mass deportation movement will target documented and undocumented immigrants because of racial profiling.
She predicts that many United States citizens will get detained accidentally by the mass deportation plan.
Etter said that the Latino community’s shift to the political right could be traced to what they see as chaos on the Mexico-United States border.
But she says that the president-elect’s mass deportation policy will not focus on securing the border solely.
The mass deportation plan that she believes will begin on the day of Trump’s inauguration, is going to be an interior enforcement operation that will have a ripple effect throughout the country.
Although the border was a big reason that many voted for Trump, the economy was another factor.
But the United States economy benefits from the work and the taxes paid by undocumented immigrants.
Because of the mass deportation plan, Etter believes that many industries will get decimated by the lack of a workforce.
She foresees the country using military bases to detain immigrants and citizens.
Etter also sees Texas becoming the hub for detained immigrants and citizens because the state has the infrastructure already in place to house them.
She believes that the country will conduct raids to find undocumented immigrants.
Furthermore, she believes that checkpoints will get placed throughout the country to stop traffic, and request that people show their papers.
Etter believes that the National Guard will be used to apprehend and detain immigrants, even going home to home.
Moreover, the raids will probably take place at businesses that hire undocumented immigrants.
However, Etter wants immigrants to know that they still possess constitutional rights despite their citizenship status.
Therefore, they do not have to answer their door or answer questions from those asking.
Despite the apprehension that the planned mass deportation has caused, Etter believes that the controversy might finally lead to much-needed immigration reform because of the images that the raids might produce in the media.
The sight of people in internment camps like Japanese Americans during World War II, might lead to bipartisan support of an immigration reform bill.
Furthermore, those possible images might have political ramifications heading into midterm elections in 2026 and the next presidential election in 2028.
Although Latinos moved to the right in 2024, University of Houston political science Professor Jeronimo Cortina does not see that as a permanent move.
Cortina said former President George W. Bush got 45 percent of the Latino vote in 2004.
However, Latino’s shifted their vote to former President Barack Obama four years later.
Cortina said, “And in this year, they voted for Trump. And it’s just a byproduct of how the Trump campaign was able to get to the voters, whether the Trump campaign and his administration are going to deliver, that’s a completely different question.”
The professor said that although many Latino voters know that inflation will not go down immediately under a second Trump administration, they needed to blame someone for higher costs.
Therefore, their vote for Trump was a rejection of Biden’s administration “even though the Biden administration doesn’t have the power to print money or anything like that or to set interest rates as a part of the Fed’s job,” said Cortina.
He added, “So, it’s a message of being fed up with the current system and finding someone as now President-elect Trump that portrays himself as an outsider. We know that it is not the case, but that was the main strategy of his campaign, and his campaign was very successful into that.”
And although voters understand the threat to democracy and the threat to diversity, equity and inclusion, it is hard for many to worry about those issues when a parent cannot buy the cereal that their children enjoy, or they do not see a better future for the next generation, Cortina said.
Despite the price of goods being one of the main reasons people went to the polls, many economists believe that Trump’s plans for tariffs and the mass deportation of immigrants will raise prices even more.
However, Rice University’s Baker Institute fellow and Texas Southern University sociology Professor Carla Brailey believes Trump benefitted because in effect he has campaigned nonstop for the presidency since 2015.
Combine that with the money that billionaire Elon Musk donated, and the Trump train became too fast to stop in 2024.
