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"This Is Not What We Voted For": Latino Voters and Trump Two Years After 2024

ARTE.tv Documentary · ▶ 24:56 · 14 min read
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Overview

In 2024, Donald Trump won nearly one in two Hispanic voters, a record for a Republican candidate. This ARTE documentary asks what has happened to that support since then. It follows a wrongly arrested Los Angeles mechanic, Venezuelan exiles in Miami, a millionaire Colombian-born entrepreneur, and a disillusioned Dominican restaurateur in New Jersey. The film argues that the Latino coalition Republicans celebrated has largely come apart, driven by economic disappointment and aggressive immigration enforcement. It also shows that some Latino voters still back the president, and that it is far from clear the rest will go back to the Democrats.

14 min read

A US citizen thrown to the ground

The film opens with an account from one of two Latino auto mechanics in Los Angeles who were arrested by mistake at their workplace by ICE, which the narration calls "the anti-immigration police." He describes seeing agents pour onto the premises. His first instinct was to tell them it was private property, but he froze when he saw guns "literally drawn at me." The agents spoke to him in Spanish and asked where he was from. Then, he recalls, one of them pointed at him and said, "Hey, get him. He's Mexican." He was thrown to the ground beside a tree on the property. He told the agents he was a US citizen born in the country, and he says "they didn't care."

According to the narration, Brian held up his passport and insisted to the officers that he was American, and they handcuffed him anyway. "I'm an American citizen. That's what I was screaming," he says. When asked why he thinks he was targeted, he answers: "Because I was brown and I was walking in the streets while brown." Under the new administration, he says, that "apparently" counts as enough reason to assume someone is in the country illegally and take them.

The film also tells the story of Javier, described as an ordinary American family man. ICE detained him and he spent five days in a federal prison for nothing. He calls the experience humiliating and traumatic. Afterwards he went through depression and fear and needed prescription medication to sleep. "Everything changed from that day," he says. "It's like… you're not safe in your own country."

From a garage to a Senate hearing

After his release, Javier got a call from Washington. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal invited him to attend a hearing with Kristi Noem, whom the film presents as the Trump cabinet secretary in charge of the mass deportation policy. During the hearing, Blumenthal pointed to "these three individuals" arrested by her agency. He asked whether targeting someone because they are, or look, Mexican when they are a US citizen is wrong. Noem replied that her agency does not target people by race or ethnicity, and that its operations are based on criminal backgrounds and the information it has.

The narration states that Trump decided to dismiss Noem after this hearing. Javier says their aim had been to get her impeached or fired. On the Thursday morning, he recalls, someone called to say "good job" and told him she was being fired. To him, this meant what they did was "something important, something meaningful," and that "our voice is being heard."

The Trump voter with the tattoo

The film calls it the irony of the story: before his arrest, Brian was a fervent Trump supporter. He even has a tattoo on his back of the kind the narration says is typical among Trump's supporters. He now bitterly regrets his vote. "I was lied to, the American people were lied to, and this is not what we voted for," he says.

His explanation shows both why he supported Trump and why he broke with him. He accepted the promise to go after "the worst of the worst." He asks who would not want rapists removed, or people who sell drugs to children. "We wanted that," he says. In his view, the administration is instead taking day laborers, farm workers, and people "just trying to provide for their families," and some of them are American citizens like him. "Now everyone is in danger because of Donald Trump," he concludes.

How fast the honeymoon ended

The narration places these stories within the larger electoral picture. Trump won the 2024 election partly by cutting into the Democrats' share of the Latino vote. Two years later, his popularity in that group has collapsed.

Mike Madrid is a Hispanic Republican who has studied the Latino vote for more than 30 years. He calls what is happening "buyer's remorse." What stands out to him is how quickly it set in. Republicans had promoted a "new racial realignment," with Latinos and other voters of color joining a multiracial MAGA majority coalition. Madrid says that realignment "collapsed within weeks of the administration taking office."

He argues the cause was first economic. In his account, the decline started on "Liberation Day" with the tariff announcement and the market chaos that followed, and polling showed steep drops from that point. The ICE raids in Los Angeles began in June, which he says was two or three months later. He calls the "one-two punch of bad economic policy and ICE raids" the force that pushed Latinos away from the new political home Republicans had briefly offered them.

Venezuelan exiles: celebration, then fear

The film then turns to a group that still supports Trump regardless: Venezuelan exiles who fled the socialist regime. When the US military announced the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, they gathered in their Miami stronghold to celebrate, shouting "Viva Venezuela!" According to the narration, everyone there now sees Trump as a liberator.

Federico's story complicates that picture. He crossed the border illegally two years ago to flee Venezuela and start the process of legalizing his status. Since then he has worked without authorization in a Miami supermarket. The narration counts him among the hundreds of thousands of Latino workers who keep the American economy running. Once the excitement over Maduro's fall faded, his hopes faded too. He had wanted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which protected Venezuelans from deportation, but the Trump administration has just eliminated it. He could now be arrested at any moment. The narration reports that, to him, expelling a working class the economy depends on makes no sense.

A Miami success story

Among Florida's Latinos, the film says, support for Trump also follows class lines: the Hispanic elite remains largely pro-Trump. In an art gallery in Little Havana, Miami's historic Cuban neighborhood, business people, TV personalities, politicians, and communications professionals gather over hors d'oeuvres and champagne for the third "Profiles of Success" ceremony honoring Latino achievement. Jorge Fajardo receives the award for best Hispanic entrepreneur.

Fajardo runs a financial firm and believes Trump's economic policy is the best for his business. He calls Trump "very pro-business, very anti-bureaucracy." He argues that many existing policies create bureaucracy that hurts the economy, and he believes the economy is improving because of some of the administration's decisions.

His own life is the kind of story the film says aspiring immigrants dream of. He arrived in the United States at age seven, penniless and speaking no English, carried by his mother as she fled cartel violence in Colombia. In a small New Jersey town he was the only Hispanic child in his second-grade class. He remembers being bullied and called names. Thirty years later he is a millionaire living in one of Miami Beach's most expensive neighborhoods. Standing in his backyard, he says the South Florida lifestyle is something he dreamed of as a boy. Back then he saw it on television, in shows like Miami Vice, with "the beautiful cars, the beautiful beaches."

He also argues that the United States should follow the example of El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, whose rule the narration describes as a police state run with an iron fist. Fajardo says El Salvador felt "very, very safe" when he visited, although it had been among the most dangerous countries in the world for decades. He thinks Trump is doing "some of that here." In his view the target is still "the criminal element" that is in the country illegally. His main concern, he says, is the business perspective, and from there he "can't say that I disagree with too many of the policies."

The narration disputes his economic optimism. It says that since Trump's return the economy has not improved, prices are still rising, and growth has slowed. A few days later, Fajardo, introducing himself on camera from his firm, sponsors a Latin gala at Mar-a-Lago, which the film calls "the holy of holies of Trumpism." He calls it a true honor to be there. The narration says that appearing in formal wear at Trump's private residence is also part of his personal branding.

The common thread: working-class values

The film says this pro-Trump enthusiasm among Florida's Latino elite is misleading. Trump took 47% of the Latino vote in 2024, and two years later, according to the narration, his popularity in the community has fallen by half.

Madrid explains what he thinks unites a group often described as "not monolithic." He agrees there are large cultural differences between Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and Mexican Americans. One shared trait is the language of origin, but he notes it is usually lost by the second or third generation, when English becomes dominant. In his view the real common thread is blue-collar, working-class values. He calls Latinos "the emergent working class in America," the essential workforce during the pandemic, and the people who keep manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and the trades running. He says this pro-growth, pro-building work ethic connects Latino communities from New York and New Jersey through Florida and Georgia to Texas, Arizona, and California, and he calls it "the future of the country."

Passaic: a barometer city

To understand these shifts, the film goes to Passaic, New Jersey, near New York, which it calls a true barometer of the Latino vote. Until the 1970s, the city of 70,000 was a white working-class stronghold. After deindustrialization the factories closed and white residents left, and within about 20 years Hispanic immigrants had replaced them. One of them was Angel Castillo, from the Dominican Republic. His own guess is that white residents left because poorer immigrants were arriving, and people who reach "a certain level" often don't want to associate with them.

Today 75% of Passaic's residents are Latino. They had always voted Democratic until 2024, when, according to the film, the city voted for Trump for the first time. Castillo was among those voters. He says the Biden administration "had open borders pretty much," despite the agents there. "Just because we're immigrants, we don't want just everybody coming here," he says. He wanted hard-working people, and Trump promised law and order and said he would go after criminals in the country illegally. "But now, he's deporting a lot of good people," Castillo says. "He went too far."

A ghost town and a 30% drop

Castillo shows the street outside his business. It used to be crowded with heavy traffic, and now, he says, it is "becoming a ghost town." He blames the ICE raids: people are afraid to go out, and in this country, he argues, people should not be afraid to go out and go to work.

As a restaurateur, he says the raids hit him directly. The film reports that his revenue has fallen 30% since Trump's re-election. His reasoning is that families know raids are happening in the city and the state, so they ask themselves whether they want to risk being humiliated in front of their family while eating out. That, he says, is "not good for business… not good for no politician."

Democrats see an opening

The narration says this kind of sentiment is reviving the Democrats' chances ahead of the midterms. It notes that a year after backing Trump, this Latino district voted Democratic again in subsequent elections. Representative Nellie Pou now serves in the House of Representatives. At the Peruvian community's traditional parade, she campaigns for re-election in November. She calls Trump's win in the district "very surprising" given its strong Democratic history. She says Governor Mikie Sherrill won it back the following year by a very large margin, and she expects voters to keep that in mind this year. From the stage she celebrates diversity as "what makes this nation so great" and finishes with "¡Que viva Perú!"

Disappointed, but not necessarily returning

The film does not conclude that disillusioned Latinos will simply return to the Democrats. It calls that "far from certain." Castillo says he has been disappointed in turn by Obama, Biden, and Trump, and he is thinking about not voting at all. He says the next election will be tough. If Trump and the Republicans cannot work with Democrats on some kind of immigration reform, which he says is "really hurting our community right now," he does not think he will vote.

The documentary ends on that uncertainty. According to the narration, Latinos now make up 15% of the electorate, and their indecision makes them a crucial voting bloc for winning US elections. Both Democrats and Republicans, it concludes, are still searching for the right formula to mobilize them.

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