Immigration policy worries Maryland Latino Republicans ahead of midterms

By Isabella González

President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are troubling some of Maryland’s Latino Republican voters, who think he is taking things too far.

With midterm elections near, the concerns are not unique to Maryland. In 2024, Latino voters helped Trump return to the White House: He gained 48% of the Hispanic vote, according to the Pew Research Center.

That support appears to be slipping this year. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Oct. 5 found that just 26% of Hispanic registered voters plan to vote Republican in November, while 52% plan to back Democrats.

In Maryland, some local Latino leaders say even Hispanic conservatives may stray from the president’s fold or simply stay home.

“It’s sad, but a lot of Latinos are going the other way,” said Juan Leo Salazar, president of the Latin Republican Organization of Maryland.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nationwide have increased arrests, often carried out by masked agents, and some captured on video showing agents forcibly detaining people.

In Maryland, ICE arrests more than doubled between Jan. 20 and March 10, 2026, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to a CNS analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project.

“This administration, Mr. Trump, is overdoing it a little bit,” Salazar said.

Gabriela Lemus, executive director of the nonpartisan Maryland Latinos Unidos, said some Latinos who voted for Trump because they wanted a better economy have seen what she called “punitive actions” against the Latino community and now regret their vote. Those voters, she said, may simply stay home.

“The more conservative Latino is not necessarily comfortable with the Democrat, but they’re not going to vote for Trump, so they may not turn out,” Lemus said.

To be sure, other Latino Republicans say many are still solidly in support of Trump. They blame other forces for economic troubles and want to keep Congress in Republican hands to help Trump implement his vision for the country.

Alfonso Talavera, chair of the Maryland GOP Hispanic & Latino Outreach Committee, said Trump is simply enforcing immigration law.

“A law is a law,” Talavera said. “If I am drunk and I am driving drunk, and a police officer stops me, I’m going to have a DUI.”

The Hispanic-Latino community is a sizable voting group in Maryland, with a population exceeding 830,000, based on U.S. Census data. Roughly 39% are eligible to vote, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

Some Latino Republican candidates have distanced themselves from the immigration enforcement actions of the current administration. Josephine Salazar, a Republican running for the Montgomery County Council in District 5, said she left immigration out of her platform. (She is not related to Juan Leo Salazar.)

“I didn’t touch immigration because it’s a hot issue,” she said. “It’s a hot, hot, hot issue.”

Although the issue is not included in her platform, Josephine Salazar told CNS that U.S. lawmakers have to find a legal path for immigrants who came illegally but pay their taxes, work hard and stay out of trouble.

Latino Republicans in Maryland say their community moved toward the GOP in the first place because they see it as the party of family values and stronger security.

“Many Hispanics told me that they had voted for President Trump because they were concerned about security,” Josephine Salazar said. “They were telling me they were worried that a lot of people were coming in who were selling drugs from Mexico, Central America and South America.”

The local leaders also cited President Ronald Reagan, who signed the 1986 law that gave legal status to nearly 3 million immigrants, as one reason some Latinos vote Republican.

Beyond immigration, Maryland Latino leaders agreed that the economy is the other issue weighing most heavily on Hispanic voters, as it is for Americans overall.

“Family, church and food. These are the three important things that we look at,” said Talavera when asked about what matters most to Latino voters.

Local leaders described families stretched to the limit by rising prices at the grocery store and the gas pump. Lemus said a Maryland Latinos Unidos survey last fall found families choosing between paying for food and paying utility bills.

“We have big families. We tend to need larger cars,” she said. “That continues to really weigh on people’s minds.”

Republican leaders blamed Democrats such as Gov. Wes Moore for the economic strain on Maryland’s Latino community. But across party lines, all agreed that families are feeling it.

“The economy is not doing very well,” Juan Leo Salazar said. “Whatever I say, it’s not going to be good news.”

– Capital News Service is a student-staffed reporting service operated by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Stories are available at the CNS site and may be reprinted as long as credit is given to Capital News Service and, most importantly, to the students who produced the work.