New citizens and immigrant-family voters cast midterm ballots as family duty

Mixed-status families carry detention fears into the ballot box

Nicole Solis-Sison moved to the United States when she was seven, after, she said, her parents and immediate family fled the Philippine government and sought asylum. When the family landed in Los Angeles, she thought the stay would be temporary — that once things calmed down in her home country, they would return. Earlier this year, after more than two decades navigating the immigration system, she became an American citizen. Now 34, Solis-Sison is voting in her first election in New York City.

“The Philippine government pursued us in international immigration territory and demanded that we be sent back,” she told NPR. Solis-Sison said an agent with what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Services agency — since renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE — showed up at the house, and the family prepared to be deported. After the agent interviewed the family, they were not sent back to Manila. The agent, she said, gave the family the tools needed to stay in the U.S. legally.

“This particular INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services] agent suggested that we should file for asylum, given that we were on U.S. soil,” Solis-Sison said.

“This is like such a milestone year for me that I’m a first time voter,” she said. “I created my own voter guide and voter diary.”

Solis-Sison said she worries about buying a home, paying off student loans and whether it is economical to start a family, as many young voters do. But this midterm, she said, the motivation to vote is tied to her immigrant experience and a responsibility she feels toward people still in the system.

“I feel like I do have a weight to protect people who are going through this process, who are getting left behind and harmed because when I tell you, I’ve only gotten out of it with like a sliver of hope,” she said.

Juan Escalante, 37, of California, said he did not know he was undocumented while growing up in south Florida. Originally from Venezuela, his family moved to the U.S. when he was 11, and he said he learned around his junior year of high school that he was not legally in the country.

“Basically, what ended up happening was that my parents paid for a lawyer who gave them really bad advice and not only gave them bad advice, but also mishandled their immigration case entirely,” Escalante said.

He added that after a case is mishandled, the application cannot simply be refiled — “you’re kind of out of the line entirely.”

Escalante’s status changed under the Obama administration, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program was established. Under the program, he became the first person in his family to graduate college. In 2025, he became the first American citizen in his family. This year, at 37, he will vote in his first general election.

“Being a first time voter here in the United States is something that’s profoundly personal and emotional for me because I understand the power of what a vote can do in service of the greater good, in service of the community,” Escalante said. “I’m proud to be an American citizen.”

Escalante said receiving his mail-in ballot in California brought mixed emotions — he was thrilled to cast a vote but overwhelmed by the ballot’s size. He said he researched every ballot proposition and candidate. “Despite the amount of bubbles that I had to fill in and the amount of research that I had to do, I never once took that for granted as I was filling out my ballot,” he said.

His parents are both green card holders, but he said the family still worries about their future status. Immigration was at the top of his mind in deciding which politicians to support.

“I do want to make sure that my values as an immigrant, as the first of my family to vote and also as a Latino to make sure that all of that is carried and translated through to my ballot,” he said.

Deisy España, 24, of Wisconsin, comes from a mixed-status family. She was born in the U.S. and has always been a citizen; her parents are from Mexico, and both were undocumented while she was growing up. España said she did not understand the risks when she was younger, including when her parents were pulled over by police while driving.

“My mom would start, like, doing the sign of the cross or praying and I never understood what that fear was until I got much older and realized that they were scared that they were going to get turned over to ICE,” España said.

Her mother recently obtained a green card, but España said the fear has not fully gone. With ICE in the news frequently since President Trump returned to office, she said that whenever she encounters someone whose family member has been taken by ICE, or reads about an ICE-related death, the same thought runs through her head: “That could have been my dad.”

España said she has always been politically active, despite not being old enough to vote until 2020. This election, she said, more feels at risk, especially with Trump’s hardline stance on immigration and ICE agents arresting people who look like her parents.

“I’m voting for my parents. I have to do it for my parents who can’t vote. But even now, more than ever,” España said.

Her message to other young voters with immigrant families, she said, is to vote for their parents.

Leydi Gonzalez, 23, of Texas, is an American citizen; both of her parents are from El Savador. She said the first thing she looked forward to once she turned 21 was helping her parents gain legal status.

“When I turned 21, the first thing that I was excited for was to finally petition my parents. It wasn’t drinking,” she said.

Thanks to her sponsorship, her parents now have authorization to be in the U.S., and the family is hoping for residency approval, Gonzalez said. She said her family began discussing who would care for her siblings if her parents were detained or deported after Trump was first elected president.

“That is a scary conversation to have. Like, ‘Hey, just in case something unknown happens to your parents, this is who you’re gonna be left with,’” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said her community has been rocked by the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas by an ICE agent, and she thinks things are on the precipice of change this election, especially if control of Congress changes. A high-profile U.S. Senate race is playing out in Texas, a reliably red state, where Democrat James Talarico has been polling ahead of Republican nominee Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general.

She said she is voting for her best interest, but that it is bigger than that.

“It definitely feels like I’m voting for my family,” Gonzalez said. “Definitely a sense of security for my family.”