I Went to a Latino Town to Talk About ICE Deportations. And Met A White Guy Who Said “I Am A Racist".
Back in February, when anti-ICE sentiment was near its peak, I decided to do something about the fact that I was frustrated with the state of the immigration debate.
The immigration conversation has become thoroughly racialized.
It’s regularly framed as White MAGA versus brown people.
And I had a sense that this framing was wrong.
I also suspected that people weren’t aware that the alternative to deportations - amnesty - had already been attempted ~40 years prior, but hadn’t stopped the cycle.
But I wasn’t sure - so I went to find out.
I drove to Downey, California - a middle-class city about 25 minutes outside LA that’s roughly 75% Latino. It’s sometimes called the “Mexican Beverly Hills.”
It’s aspirational, it’s diverse in thought, and it’s not staunchly left or right.
I wanted to talk to people in a community that actually lives with this issue, and was particularly interested to hear from Latinos who support deportations of non-violent illegal immigrants.
There were some surprises. But one thing was made evident that shouldn’t be a surprise: the division is not as bad as the media and social media would have you think.
Latinos Are Not a Monolith
Before we get into the conversations, here’s some context on the Latino community in America.
In the 2024 election, somewhere between 46% and 54% of Latino men voted for Trump, depending on which data source you use. That’s a dramatic shift from 2020 when Biden won Latino men by a significant margin. Cuban Americans went for Trump at roughly 58%. Even Mexican Americans - the largest Latino group in the country - saw Trump’s share rise meaningfully from previous elections.
The Latino community is one of the most ideologically diverse demographics in America.
There are progressives, there are conservatives, there are people who are deeply torn.
There are legal immigrants who resent illegal immigration.
There are children of undocumented parents who joined the military.
It’s a community that has sympathy for illegal immigrants, but memory of how lawlessness has harmed the countries those people are fleeing.
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From here, you will learn:
The surprisingly reasonable compromises on illegal immigration proposed by the Latino community (including what one woman said the government should be targeting instead of the workers).
The real reason a disabled white veteran proudly called himself a “racist” to my face, and the unexpected, non-racial root of his anger.
The psychological breakdown of why calling people names creates behavioral compliance but destroys critical thinking.
How the media’s name-calling and thought-policing actually pre-empts critical thinking and backfires into rebellion.
