By Eladio Bobadilla

Since President Donald Trump's return to office, more than 60 people have died at the hands of or in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities. The most recent cases include two Latino immigrants who died within a single week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Many Latinos in the United States have come to feel that their brown skin makes them targets — and evidence suggests they are not wrong.

Yet there is another dimension to this story that often goes overlooked: many of the officials carrying out anti-immigrant operations also have brown skin, Hispanic surnames, and deep ties to the very communities affected by these enforcement actions. When the identities of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who killed Alex Pretti in January were disclosed, the public learned that both were Hispanic men. The revelation provoked widespread shock, with the irony appearing self-evident — but it rested on a flawed assumption: that Latinos are inherently opposed to restrictive immigration policies.

History tells a different story.

Latinos as Both Targets and Enforcers

Latinos have not only been frequent targets of nativism and xenophobic violence; they have also been consistent supporters — and regularly enforcers — of such measures. For decades, Latinos have joined the Border Patrol in significant numbers, and since its creation in 2003, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well. The Border Patrol, established in 1924, has long recruited from Mexican American communities along the southwestern border, where Spanish-language fluency and local geographic knowledge were considered essential qualifications. Latinos now account for a majority of Border Patrol officers and approximately 20 to 30 percent of ICE agents.

More broadly, Latino voters have frequently backed restrictionist policies and candidates promising tighter borders and tougher measures against immigrant families and communities. Reactionary politics in the United States, in other words, are not merely imposed on Latinos — they have repeatedly gained traction within Latino communities themselves.

An Uneasy Middle Ground

Why? Latinos have long occupied an ambivalent position in American society — subject to discrimination and exclusion, yet also drawn to political appeals promising belonging, security, and elevated social status. Like any other demographic group, they can embrace movements that harm others, and at times even themselves.

This precarity helps explain why Latinos join immigration enforcement agencies in such large numbers. Scholars and historians have proposed various explanations over the years — economic stability, steady government employment, a desire to serve their communities, and an aspiration for proximity to whiteness. Each of these factors captures only part of the picture.

Historical Roots: From Operation Wetback to the UFW

The phenomenon dates back to at least the 1950s, when prominent Latino leaders and organizations lent support to deportation campaigns such as Operation Wetback, which aimed to remove hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants — along with their U.S. citizen family members — from the country. That support was often grounded in concerns about labor competition that were not entirely unfounded: American employers routinely leveraged migrant labor to undermine unions, depress wages, and break strikes.

This logic persisted through the 1960s and 1970s. The United Farm Workers (UFW), under César Chávez's leadership, frequently treated undocumented workers as threats to its labor organizing efforts. Union activists routinely harassed migrants, reported them to immigration authorities, and even organized their own patrols along the U.S.–Mexico border — some of which culminated in violence against immigrants.

Shifting Attitudes and Enduring Undercurrents

Attitudes, however, were never static. The civil rights movement reshaped American racial politics. The rise of Black Power influenced Chicano activism, leading many Mexican Americans to shed the illusion that they could be regarded as white — at least in legal terms — and to reject assimilationist pressures. Support for restrictionist immigration policies did not vanish, but it became less dominant within many Latino political circles.

Nativist undercurrents nonetheless persisted. Concerns about labor competition endured, alongside anxieties about belonging, social status, and what new waves of immigration might mean for Latinos' own standing in American society.

Latinos were notably ambivalent about Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to deny immigrants and their families access to public social services. Although only about a quarter of Latino voters ultimately supported the measure, polling in the months and weeks before the election indicated that nearly half had considered voting in favor. Federal courts later struck down the law's core provisions as unconstitutional, but its political legacy proved more enduring: the initiative galvanized a surge in Latino voter registration and accelerated a generational realignment of California Latino voters toward the Democratic Party.

The Trump Era and Beyond

"Latinos for Trump" coalitions played a meaningful role in Donald Trump's rise and the emergence of his MAGA movement in 2016. When Trump ran for reelection in 2024, he did not merely retain significant Latino backing — he expanded it. His gains were particularly pronounced among Latino men and in predominantly Latino border regions. Counties along the U.S.–Mexico border, including some with large or even majority-Latino populations, shifted toward Trump.

At the same time, the American right was increasingly bound together less by biological conceptions of race and more by shared opposition to multiculturalism, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and liberalism more broadly. Race remained relevant, but the boundaries of political belonging on the right grew more flexible and inclusive.

The movement increasingly embraced prominent figures of color — from Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas to Linda Chavez and Marco Rubio. More recently, even elements of the far-right fringe have welcomed Latino leaders and activists who share their ideological commitments. Notable examples include Enrique Tarrio, the Afro-Cuban leader of the self-described "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys, who participated in the January 6 insurrection and received a Trump pardon; and Nick Fuentes, the self-described white supremacist influencer whose father is Mexican American.

Inclusion on Specific Terms

This ideological evolution helps explain why some Latinos have found these movements attractive. They offer inclusion — but on specific terms. They allow participants, including immigration enforcement agents, to perceive themselves not as victims or outsiders, but as defenders of order, tradition, and an admittedly vague and sometimes violent conception of American values.

The lesson here is not that Latinos are uniquely reactionary. Far from it. The dynamic echoes a broader pattern in American immigration history: groups that have gained a degree of social acceptance have, in various eras, supported restrictions on those who arrive after them. Every community contains contradictions. Every group produces both opponents and defenders of the status quo. And recent polling suggests that Latinos have already begun to swing away from Trump and the Republican Party.

The real lesson is that Latino support for restrictionist politics should no longer be treated as a paradox. It is part of a long and deeply rooted history — a much longer story than most Americans realize. Understanding that history requires, first and foremost, acknowledging it.

Eladio Bobadilla is a historian at the University of Pittsburgh and author of "Dangerous Migration: Mexican Labor and the Fight for Immigrant Rights." This article was produced in collaboration with Zócalo Public Square, published by the Los Angeles Times, and distributed by Tribune Content Agency.