Not long ago, caravans of pickup trucks flying Trump flags rolled through the Rio Grande Valley. Those "Trump trains" are gone now – and so is much of the Hispanic support that helped Republicans make history in the region two years ago.
In 2024, Hispanic voters in the valley gave the GOP majority support for the first time in modern history. According to more than two dozen interviews by The New York Times, many of those voters are now furious over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and an economy they say has only gotten worse.
Luis Cabrera, a pastor who chairs the faith initiative committee of the Cameron County GOP, said he spent years urging working-class Hispanic voters to back Republicans, but he told the Times that he now tells national GOP figures the party is losing its new converts.
"So many people, for the first time ever, shifted parties to vote for you," Cabrera said. "They are baby Republicans — they just came to the party — and if you don't take care of what you promised people, they're going to turn on you."
Jessica Cantu Vuittonet, a San Benito coffee shop owner, cast her first-ever ballot for Trump and cheered on the Trump trains. She said she expected deportations to target "true hardcore criminals," but then her brother was detained earlier this year, days after a scheduled check-in with immigration officials.
"They betrayed me, they turned their backs on us," Vuittonet said. She doesn't plan to vote this year.
The crackdown has also hit the region's construction industry, which has relied on immigrant labor for decades.
McAllen builder Ariel Salinas said workers began disappearing once ICE agents started showing up at job sites, and builders now put fences around developments to protect their crews, and demand was so high that it caused a fence shortage this summer.
"Now you put the fence up because ICE is stealing the workers," Salinas said. "My circle, my family, we feel betrayed by this."
Not every Trump voter has soured. Jerry Hernandez, 60, said people who haven't broken the law "have nothing to be afraid of."
Recent polls show Democrats leading Republicans among likely Hispanic voters by about 35 percentage points on the generic congressional ballot.
Texas Republicans redrew several House districts last year assuming the Hispanic shift would last, but GOP candidates now face uphill races in the 15th, 28th and 34th districts, even though Trump won those areas by double digits.
The trend could also help Democrat James Talarico in his Senate race against Republican Ken Paxton.
Vice President JD Vance is traveling to the region Wednesday to rally voters, but it may already be too late to turn things around.
“At this point with the way things went, it’s hard to trust now — that has been broken,” Vuittonet said. “We see that red and blue are just two colors. They’re both after the same thing and don’t care about people here.”
