Civil society groups have feared that the mass anti-immigration surges across the US this year would have a chilling effect on voter turnout in Latino communities.

”We have not seen here at the local level people worried to show up to vote because they think ICE is going to be there,” Michael Mireles, a canvassing organizer with LUPE Votes, a get-out-the-vote group in southern Texas, tells WIRED. “People are driven right now by their anti-ICE sentiment, and it's not stopping them from going to the polls.”

Mireles is one of a dozen activists, volunteers, and organizers WIRED spoke to in recent weeks about the impact Trump’s hard-line immigration policies were having on communities that turned out in surprising numbers for the president in 2024. Trump’s immigration policies have disproportionately targeted Latino neighborhoods, and many law-abiding US citizens have been caught up in the ICE dragnet. For weeks now, the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration have claimed that they have no plans to deploy ICE agents to polling locations on election day, but President Donald Trump and administration officials like DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin and attorney general Todd Blanche have repeatedly hinted at some sort of deployment.

While there is certainly still fear about what may happen on Election Day, the overwhelming message coming from the Latino community is that rather than being cowed, they are defying the administration to turn up in record numbers.

These experiences are backed up by data. Early voting figures indicate people are casting their ballots at a much higher rate than in recent elections .

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