Recently, in Los Angeles, protesters waving Mexican flags amid burning vehicles and law enforcement in riot gear have resurrected memories of 1994, when similar scenes defined Latino political identity for a generation. During that year’s movement against California Proposition 187, which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from accessing education, health care, and social services, Latino citizens banded together with recent arrivals of varying legal status in solidarity. This was a catalyzing moment that spurred many Latinos not only in California, but across the country, to understand themselves as an aggrieved ethnic minority, and to vote as a bloc. Now, three decades later, something similar might be taking place.
The escalation of immigration raids around Los Angeles and Donald Trump’s deployment of military forces—over Governor Gavin Newsom’s objection—to quell anti-ICE protests have heightened fears among many Latinos that they are under systemic attack. The forcible removal of Senator Alex Padilla from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference after he tried to ask her about ICE raids has only added to the unease. Even though many social metrics suggest that Latinos are assimilating into the U.S. mainstream, the MAGA movement keeps reminding them that it does not consider them fully American. On Friday, Vice President J. D. Vance, who served in the Senate with Padilla, mocked him and called him “José Padilla.”
Out of dissatisfaction with the economy under Joe Biden, more Latinos voted for Trump in November than in his two previous bids. That historic showing was widely viewed as a turn away from ethnic politics. The reality is more nuanced: Latinos have always been primarily focused on economic issues, but they will coalesce as an ethnic voting bloc when they sense a serious threat to their community…