Sitting at a corner of a cantina in Pilsen, with a glass of brandy in hand, Miguel Barajas smiled as he looked up at the TV screen showing the news of Tuesday’s historic presidential election.
“Gano mi compadre Trump. My buddy Trump won,” he said, smiling as he raised his glass toward the bartender. The sounds of a ranchera song from the old jukebox played in the background.
Barajas, 64, a Mexican immigrant who became a naturalized citizen a little over two decades ago, said he had voted for Democratic candidates in all previous presidential elections until this one, when he cast his vote for Donald Trump.
“He will fix this economy, he knows what he’s doing,” Barajas said.
As pro-immigrant leaders pledge to continue advocating for the protection and rights of the immigrant community threatened by Trump’s promise to deport millions in the U.S. without documentation, some, like Barajas, celebrate Trump’s win.
In the five wards with the highest rate of Latinos, Trump got from 27% to 41% of the vote in this week’s election, according to a Tribune analysis of voting and demographic data.
It is difficult to compare that to how those same areas voted four years ago, because the city redrew ward maps and changed voting precinct boundaries. But one clue can be found in comparing the voting patterns in precincts within Little Village, known as the Mexico of the Midwest and a gateway for immigrants, including many of the new migrants.
In precincts within Little Village, the support for Trump appeared to have more than doubled: from 13% in 2020 to 32% in 2024, according to an analysis of unofficial results. That type of swing mirrors national data that suggests the Latino vote helped Trump get into office despite his use of rhetoric during the campaign that his opponents decried as racist and anti-immigrant.
For some naturalized citizens in Chicago, children of immigrants and even some people in the U.S. illegally, the promise of a better economy and stronger border security outweighs the threat of mass deportation and stricter immigration policies. Many said they shifted to the right because they felt left out and betrayed by the Democratic candidates after recent migrants received financial support and work permits but longtime undocumented immigrants were seemingly forgotten.
Barajas was one of them. While sipping on his brandy, he said he was hopeful that the new administration “would know who to deport.”
“There’s people that come here to work, those who are doing the right thing,” he said. “Then there are those who are not doing anything good for the country.”
Barajas crossed the southern border from Mexico unauthorized more than four decades ago but married a U.S. citizen in 1983. He became a naturalized citizen years later.
“I know there are some risks, but things are just terrible for everyone in the country. Maybe Trump will make a difference,” Barajas said.
His friend Luis Lopez, 60, a second-generation Mexican American from Guanajuato and Jalisco, cast his vote for Trump in 2020 and again on Tuesday.
For Lopez, a longtime Pilsen native, the economy and immigration were a factor for voting Republican. Like Barajas, he doesn’t fear mass deportation. Instead, he believes that the incoming administration will take into consideration those without documentation who “came here to work and who have been here for a long time.”
“It’s not fair what Democrats did,” he said, referring to the public aid that some new arrivals got in Chicago and other U.S. cities, including food stamps and rent assistance. “Many of us may have come illegally, but we came here to work, not to ask for anything.”
That sentiment, strongly contradicted by pro-immigrant leaders in the city, is echoed by Elena Ruiz, a street vendor lacking permanent legal status who was selling donuts outside grocery stores in the Pilsen area.
Ruiz said that even though she couldn’t vote, she encouraged those who could to vote for Trump. And when she learned that he had won, she immediately called her family in Mexico to let them know.
“I was extremely happy that Trump won,” she said in Spanish. “I’m not scared. We have been working here for decades, if they wanted to deport us, they would have done it a long time ago.”
The middle-aged woman from Mexico City arrived in Chicago a little over nine years ago and has been working without a work permit since then. She said she is not upset that many new migrants now have a work permit and protection from deportation, rather she is saddened.
“They (Biden and the Democrats) did not value people like myself who came here to work. Maybe Trump will.”
After all, Ruiz said, “God is by our side and God willing, something better will come for us.”
A community divided
The newfound support for Trump within Latino communities has ignited a sense of division among some friends and families.
Milton Olivares, 28, said that while he went out to canvas for Kamala Harris for two months in different parts of Wisconsin, many of his closest friends had their minds set on Trump. All of them are young Latino men.
“I’m still trying to process this,” said Olivares as he sat outside Cafe Jumping Bean on West 18th Street. “I’ve known these people all my life.”
Olivares said he is not surprised about the overwhelming support from Latino men toward the Republican Party, saying that it’s “rooted in misogyny and patriarchy.”
“Some have questioned if a country could be run by a woman of color,” Olivares said.
His friend, Jeff Smith, 47, sat next to him. Unlike Olivares, Smith said he was determined to cut off people who did not share the same values as him.
“There’s nothing that dictates that you have to stay friends with those people,” Smith said.
But historically about a third of Latino voters have voted Republican, said Sylvia Puente, a public policy expert and a civic and Latino community leader who is president of the Latino Policy Forum.
“As we know, the Latino community and, in consequence, the Latino vote is not a monolith. It’s important to remember that while a significant number did vote for Trump, the majority voted for presidential candidate Kamala Harris.”
Latinos, she said, care about the issues all other voters care about including economic status and condition, high rates of inflation and unemployment.
“What we saw in this election is the pain of working American and working-class America that was reflected amongst all demographics.”
Sam Sanchez, a business leader and Chicago restauranter who employs dozens of immigrant workers, loudly advocated for work permits for longtime immigrants during the summer. He said it was offensive that the Biden administration expedited work permits for new migrants from mostly Venezuela, as well as Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti.
“The Hispanic community feels betrayed by the Democratic Party, as they have been overlooked in favor of new arrivals despite paying taxes and contributing to this country for decades,” Sanchez said. “Both the Biden and Obama administrations failed to address their concerns, despite having full control of the House, Senate and Presidency for two years.”
But what is lost in between the frustration toward the Democratic Party is the future that could potentially affect not only new migrants, but those who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, their parents, and millions of others who live in mixed-status families.
While Trump and his advisers have offered outlines, many questions remain about how they would deport anywhere close to the 11 million people estimated to be in the country illegally.
Though he has said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country the U.S. is at war with, he has spoken about deploying the National Guard, which can be activated on orders from a governor. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, has said troops under sympathetic Republican governors would be sent to nearby states that refuse to participate.
While all those living in the country illegally could face a risk of deportation under Trump’s plans, recent migrants are at the highest risk, said Ana Gil Garcia, the president and founder of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance.
The organization has been working with the city of Chicago to provide resources and educational tools to the new migrants, mostly from Venezuela.
That’s because the federal government has their personal information as asylum-seekers and many only have temporary protected status, or a temporary work permit that protects them from deportation, Gil said.
Out of the more than 50,000 who have arrived in Chicago, she estimates that less than half have any type of permit to be in the country, and therefore face the possibility of being deported.
“There are mothers who are afraid to take their children to school. Some don’t want to drive or go to work because they are scared,” Gil said.
A day after the election, Democratic state lawmakers and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights gathered to vow to continue working to ensure that the immigrant community in Illinois is safe and protected from deportation.
“We’ve been through this before, and we will get through it again,” said Lawrence Benito, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
The Illinois Venezuelan Alliance is planning to partner with the Resurrection Project to host workshops to help migrants apply for TPS and work permits. Other workers’ rights organizations will be hosting a “Know Your Rights” campaign.
Erendira Rendon, vice president of Immigrant Justice at the Resurrection Project and a DACA recipient, said she was “disheartened” by the election results, “but committed to do the work that we’ve been doing to ensure that as many as immigrants are protected.”
Rendon said the challenge now is to protect policies such as TPS and DACA, which were challenged by Trump’s first administration.
“We believe that the Trump administration will attempt to reverse as many state policies as possible that are friendly towards immigrants and he is probably at a stronger position now than he was previously.”
That means mixed-status families in the Chicago area, newly arrived or those who have been here for decades, could be affected beyond just deportation.
Whether they voted for him or not.
Chicago Tribune’s Joe Mahr contributed to this report.
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