// WIRED US/UK — MOBILE & WEB
ICE Is Inspiring Latinos to Vote in Historic Numbers
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. By Monday afternoon, more than 57million people had voted early, 10 million more than the total early voting figure in the 2022 midterms. In many states, Latino communities are accounting for a larger share than in previous years, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
In Texas, there have already been over 400,000 people who didn’t vote in 2024 who have cast their ballot in 2026. Of that figure, 50 percent are Latino voters, Tom Bonier, a Democrat strategist and adviser to data company TargetSmart, revealed in an interview last week.
And what’s happening in Texas is being replicated across the country, according to data from TargetSmart. By October 27, 3.8 million Hispanic and Latino voters had cast a ballot nationwide, a massive increase from the 2.35 million Hispanic and Latino voters who had voted by the same date in 2022.
“Where large Hispanic communities exist in Texas, there is elevated turnout even above the blistering statewide pace,” Michael McDonald, who runs the University of Florida Election Lab, wrote in an analysis last week. “Texas Hispanics are voting at higher levels than in past elections, as we can see in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.”
This analysis was backed up by data shared with WIRED by the League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest Latino civil rights group in the country.
The league’s data shows that in Texas’ 15th congressional district, which includes a part of the Rio Grande Valley, over 12,000 people who have voted early did not vote in the previous elections. Those votes could have a significant impact in a district where incumbent Republican congresswoman Monica De La Cruz won in 2022 by around 12,000 votes.