Historian links Latino support for ICE to a longer US history

The essay cites border agents, ICE staffing and shifting Latino politics

Eladio Bobadilla, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh, argues that Latino participation in immigration enforcement should not be treated as a contradiction. Latinos have often been targets of nativism and xenophobic violence, he writes, while also joining agencies and political movements that support restrictive immigration policies.

The essay points to the Border Patrol and ICE, which was established in 2003. Bobadilla writes that Latinos make up a majority of Border Patrol officers and between 20% and 30% of ICE agents. He also says Latino voters have repeatedly supported politicians and policies that would tighten U.S. borders and target immigrant families and communities.

The analysis comes against the backdrop of deaths connected to immigration enforcement. Bobadilla writes that more than 60 people have died at the hands of or in the custody of ICE since Trump’s return to power. He identifies two Latino immigrants who died in one week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.

Bobadilla also cites the January deaths of Alex Pretti and the later disclosure that the agents involved were two Hispanic men. He writes that the disclosure prompted shock because it challenged the assumption that Latinos are naturally opposed to restrictionist immigration policies.

The essay attributes Latino participation in immigration enforcement to several pressures. Bobadilla writes that Latinos have occupied an uneasy position in U.S. society, facing discrimination and exclusion while also responding to appeals centered on belonging, security and status. He says scholars have also examined stable employment, a desire to serve their communities and the pursuit of proximity to whiteness, but argues that those explanations account for only part of the phenomenon.

Bobadilla traces the history to the 1950s, when prominent Latino leaders and organizations supported deportation campaigns including Operation Wetback. The campaign sought to remove hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants and their citizen family members from the United States. He writes that some support grew from fears of labor competition, as employers used migrant labor to undermine unions, suppress wages and break strikes.

The same conflict appeared in labor organizing during the 1960s and 1970s, according to the essay. The United Farm Workers often treated undocumented workers as threats to organizing. Bobadilla writes that union activists harassed migrants, reported them to immigration authorities and organized patrols along the border, some of which resulted in violence against immigrants.

Attitudes shifted as the civil rights movement changed U.S. racial politics. Bobadilla says the rise of Black Power influenced Chicano activism and that many Mexican Americans rejected the idea that they could be treated as white, at least legally. Support for restrictionist policies did not disappear, he writes, but became less dominant in many Latino political circles.

Restrictionist views remained visible in debates over California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that sought to deny immigrants and their families access to social services. Bobadilla writes that only a quarter of Latinos ultimately supported the proposition, while polling before the vote suggested nearly half had considered voting for it.

The essay also connects the history to Trump’s political rise. Bobadilla writes that “Latinos for Trump” factions contributed to Trump’s rise in 2016. During his 2024 reelection campaign, he retained significant Latino support and expanded it among Latino men and in heavily Latino border regions, according to the essay. Counties along the U.S.-Mexico border, including counties with large or majority-Latino populations, shifted toward Trump.

Bobadilla says the American right has increasingly organized around opposition to multiculturalism, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and liberalism rather than biological notions of race. He points to figures including Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Linda Chavez and Marco Rubio, as well as Enrique Tarrio, a January 6 insurrectionist and recipient of a Trump pardon who led the self-described “western chauvinist” Proud Boys, and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist influencer whose father is Mexican American.

The essay’s conclusion is that Latino support for anti-immigration politics is not unique to Latinos and should not be treated as a paradox. Bobadilla writes that every community contains internal contradictions and produces both opponents and defenders of the status quo. He also says recent polls suggest Latinos have begun moving away from Trump and Republicans.

Bobadilla wrote the essay for Zócalo Public Square. The Guardian published it with permission. He is the author of Dangerous Migration: Mexican Labor and the Fight for Immigrant Rights.