The day after the midterm elections, Fatima Santiago, I.C.M., organized a new computer class at a community center in Peñitas, Tex. No one showed up, she said, because Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were on every street.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary founded the center, called “Proyecto Desarrollo Humano,” or “Human Development Project,” in 2004 to serve people who live at or below the poverty line in this rural area of Hidalgo County, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley along the U.S.-Mexico border. One way they served them over the last few months was to help those who were eligible register to vote.
“We registered 80 new people in our community center to get out to vote,” Sister Santiago said, explaining that many they registered were voting for the first time and needed help understanding the process.
The effort was part of a broader initiative by Valley Interfaith, an organization that brings together congregations, labor unions and community institutions in the Rio Grande Valley. Community organizers began the process in January, according to Ricky Mendoza, a senior organizer with Valley Interfaith.
“From January until October, that’s really when we did the bulk of the work,” he said. “Just listening sessions, going into our institutions, going into new institutions, and just asking that simple question: What are the pressures you and your family are facing?”
Mr. Mendoza said Valley Interfaith exists “to give ordinary people a sense of power.” The results from the midterm elections illustrate what that power can do. In 2024, Donald J. Trump won Cameron, Hidalgo and Starr counties in Texas on his way to a second term. On Nov. 3, those border counties swung sharply toward Democratic candidates. That helped elect Gina Hinojosa, who will be the state’s first Latina governor and is herself from the Rio Grande Valley.
National polls point to the economy as the top issue for voters. But in these southern Texas counties, according to Eddie Anaya, a parishioner at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Las Milpas, the top issue was immigration.
“It affected every aspect of a community,” he said. “And that happened in Peñitas, Brownsville, Willacy County, everywhere. So people said, ‘Enough is enough. We need change.’”
Mr. Anaya, a Valley Interfaith leader at his parish, said immigration is tied to the economy.
“A lot of our residents here go out to work [in the] construction business. Well, they get detained, they get deported,” he said. “Well, guess what? Who pays the bills?”
On three Sundays leading into the midterms, Mr. Anaya said his parish priest encouraged the congregation to participate in the election. “If we don’t go vote, nobody will listen to us,” he recalled his pastor saying. “Nobody.”
Such appeals are not typical, according to Luis Ricardo Fraga, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Notre Dame. He said priests more commonly avoid addressing elections, and he had not heard of immigration being discussed more often in parishes this year.
On the issues, he said, Latinos are concerned about both the economy and immigration nationally.
“Cost of living has always been a very important issue to Latinos,” Mr. Fraga said, noting that Latinos tend to follow national public opinion. Immigration is historically a gateway issue, he said, meaning Latinos often first assess candidates based on their stance on immigration.
“What happened in this particular election is that the severity of the enforcement and the nature of the enforcement that is occurring highlighted the harm and hurt that many Latino communities and Latino families and Latino neighborhoods experience,” he said. “And I think they reacted to that and said, ‘No, this is too much.’”
Mr. Fraga has roots in Texas. He is from Corpus Christi, his father is from the Rio Grande Valley, and his mother is from Eagle Pass. Border communities, he said, are binational communities.
“You had family members on both sides of the border,” he said. “Our immigration policies, especially the draconian enforcement policies of the current administration, just sever that flexibility, sever that tie.”
Those who live on the border contend with undocumented immigration, narcotrafficking and human trafficking, but they are “also very aware of the impact that severe measures of enforcement can have on families, on friends, on fellow members of their parishes,” Mr. Fraga said. According to a 2020 analysis, Latinos make up nearly half of Border Patrol agents and about 30 percent of ICE agents.
“It’s a very good job in terms of how much it pays,” Mr. Fraga said. “But in doing so, it also puts you in a situation where you have to decide as an agent whether you’re going to arrest your fellow ethnic brothers and sisters. And many of those agents make that decision.”
He described it as “a bit contradictory…but it’s real.”
Mr. Fraga cautioned against reading too much into the election results. About 30 percent of Latinos have backed Republican presidential candidates since the 1970s, he said, adding that the surge in Latino support for Mr. Trump in 2024 was “an anomaly.” Whether this year’s shift is lasting, Mr. Fraga said, will only be clear after another three or four elections.
Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, called the midterm elections “an earthquake.”
“Immigration enforcement wasn’t a policy debate,” he said. “It was a family member who was detained. It was an empty pew in the parish.”
Mr. Corbett, whom Pope Leo XIV named to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in March, said Latino Catholics are not a constituency the church serves: “They are the church.”
“The church’s witness on immigration never depended on who is in power, and that should remain the case,” he said. “We don’t measure ourselves in election cycles. We measure ourselves in how we’re meeting the needs of the stranger.”
Many immigrant communities have been living in fear since the Trump administration began aggressive enforcement measures, he said, but in Texas it has been consistent over many years. He noted the state’s initiatives to criminalize undocumented people, legal pressure on faith-based shelters and busing initiatives that drove undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities. Operation Lone Star, which Gov. Greg Abbott launched in 2021, deployed the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to the border.
“Texas built it, but now I’m hopeful because Texas can also lead the way out of this,” Mr. Corbett said. “What was true of cruelty, which we exported to the rest of the country, can also be true of decency and the beginning of reforming our nation’s immigration system.”
Representatives from the border can describe what a “working border looks like,” he said. That would include honoring asylum law and due process and treating the regional economy as a “partnership with Mexico and not the front line in a war on migrants.”
The border is not a wound that needs to be shut, but instead “a place where two countries work together,” Mr. Corbett said, where binational communities “breathe together.”
The next Congress, he said, might bring about protections for Dreamers and undocumented families who arrived many years ago. Mr. Corbett also hopes for bipartisan accountability for detention conditions and ICE abuses.
Valley Interfaith invited candidates from both parties to an Oct. 11 accountability session. Community leaders presented a list of their priorities, which included protecting SNAP food assistance, keeping health care affordable, regulating data centers to protect communities as well as improving drainage and reducing flooding in the Rio Grande Valley. They also want more support for Dreamers, including a path to citizenship, and reform of a system they describe as outdated and as “criminalizing immigration.”
Each of the eight candidates they invited was asked to commit to meeting with Valley Interfaith within 60 days of taking office.
Guadalupe Guillén, a Valley Interfaith leader at St. Eugene de Mazenod in Brownsville, said many people in the community didn’t think it was worth voting at first. They didn’t think their vote would change anything. She would tell them, “If you don’t vote, you’re giving away your power.”
Valley Interfaith does not support particular parties or candidates, Ms. Guillén explained in an interview conducted in Spanish. For her, what happened in the midterm elections was not about Democrats or Republicans.
“It’s the dignity of families,” Ms. Guillén said. “It’s just wanting to live in peace, without families always living in fear and despair.”
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