In South Texas, the GOP immigration hard line is now political kryptonite

Reactions to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants are putting vulnerable Republicans in a difficult position, forcing them to change their tune to appease angry Hispanic voters or risk losing key battleground seats.

It’s a delicate turning point for Republicans in South Texas, who have spent years taking a hardline approach on immigration, flipping historically blue counties in the process.

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, who represents a majority-Hispanic district, has moved from calling for mass deportations to focusing on the “worst of the worst.” Instead of accelerating deportations, he wants to create new visa categories for undocumented workers to fill jobs in construction and agriculture. And instead of criticizing the Biden White House for its “border failure,” he is holding private meetings at the Trump White House to promote moderation in immigration enforcement.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, whose district shares hundreds of miles with Mexico, wants his party to talk more about the border and said he plans to “continue to advocate that the Republican Party should focus on convicted criminal illegal aliens” amid widespread outrage over deportations of undocumented people who pose no proven risk to public safety.

Like other Republicans, they are slowly trying to move away from the intense crackdown on immigration. quickly became political kryptonite for the GOP – but without being seen as disloyal to the president or undermining his previous positions.

“President Trump made a promise and kept that promise by securing the border. That was phase one,” De La Cruz said in an interview. “We’re now in the second phase where real immigration reform is being talked about.”

Republicans’ efforts to change the conversation will test Trump’s ability to maintain or even expand his gains with Hispanic voters in 2024 and will play a crucial role in the fight for control of Congress in November. Multiple polls in recent weeks have shown that many Hispanic voters across the country, pushed back by the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, are disgruntled with the Republican president they supported to a historic degree in 2024.

It’s a warning the White House is taking seriously. In recent weeks, following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by an immigration officer in Minneapolis, the White House has signaled it is open to rolling back the deportation operation. On Thursday, border czar Tom Homan announced the administration’s massive immigration influx in Minneapolis it would end.

Latino voters’ embrace of Trump was a political earthquake, and its epicenter was South Texas.

De La Cruz’s district, which stretches from the Rio Grande Valley along the U.S.-Mexico border to the San Antonio suburbs, was represented by a Democrat in Congress for 120 years before De La Cruz won the seat in 2022. In 2024, Trump cruised to an 18-point victory.

The 15th Congressional District was among those redrawn in the Texas legislature’s redistricting drive last year, offering De La Cruz an even more favorable electorate. But that bet depends heavily on Hispanic voters sticking with the GOP: About 80 percent of the district identifies as Hispanic or Latino, and if those voters turn to the Democratic Party or stay home, that could erase much of the new map’s intended friendliness toward Republicans.

“With the border secure and Latinos responding to ICE raids and government overreach, districts that Republicans thought were their future a year ago are likely to be devastated,” said Republican strategist Mike Madrid, a frequent critic of Trump. “It’s hard to find another situation in the last 50 years where a political party has squandered such a generational opportunity.”

Flipping De La Cruz’s district is a top goal this cycle for House Democrats salivating at the prospect of winning back Latino voters. He’ll face either Bobby Pulido, the Tejano music star with common name identification who was recruited by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or Ana Cuellar, an emergency room doctor with an impressive penchant for fundraising.

Local Republicans began sounding the alarm.

Daniel Garza, president of the LIBRE Initiative, a grassroots conservative group based in South Texas, said “Biden’s border chaos” is directly responsible for Texas Republicans’ victories in recent election cycles, including De La Cruz’s, but that moving to the other extreme — a hard push — could once again deter Hispanic voters who might support the GOP.

“We don’t have to be a nation that has to choose between an ‘all in’ or ‘all out’ approach,” Garza said. “Honestly, I feel like all the Texas border counties are moving to the right because of the border chaos… But I think that kind of exclusionary approach also has some repercussions.”

The crackdown on immigrants has caused great damage to the business world in the region. Greg LaMantia, who runs a large beer wholesaler in the area, said his company’s sales dropped as a result of the raids. “There are legal people who are deathly afraid of getting caught up in this debacle and being deported,” said LaMantia, who voted for Trump and recently donated to both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. “It’s caused sales to decline, there’s no doubt about that. It’s chaos.”

Daniel Guerrero, CEO of the McAllen-based South Texas Builders Association, said excessive ICE activity has sent a chill through the construction industry and led to major delays. He said ICE is notorious for following concrete trucks to construction sites, then arresting workers who begin pouring foundations and leaving behind half-poured concrete slabs.

“The sentiment is pretty clear that no one really expected sanctions of this magnitude,” said Guerrero, who voted for Trump and De La Cruz in 2024.

He said the Spanish Trump supporters he knows have become alienated from this administration, an observation supported by recent polls. At the last warning sign, Latino voters helped propel a Democrat to a reliably red seat Last month in Fort Worth. Taylor Rehmet, who won a state Senate seat in a special election, won nearly 4 in 5 Hispanic votes throughout the districtThat’s a massive 26-point improvement over Kamala Harris in 2024.

Many Republicans are trying to redirect the debate on immigration to focus on how border crossings have fallen to historic lows under Trump; They hope it will remind Hispanic voters why they should stick with the GOP.

“The Hispanic population gives President Trump and the Republicans a lot of leeway in terms of how bad things were before and where they are now,” said Gonzales, whose large border district is majority Hispanic. “There’s a lot of leeway to get a lot of runway, if you want.”

De La Cruz successfully navigated deportations in 2024 and “the worst border security crisis in our nation’s history.” Now he proposes marriage H-2C, a new visa category, Allowing employers in the construction and hospitality sectors to employ foreign workers. Room introduced legislation This would expand the H-2A visa category for seasonal agricultural workers.

In recent weeks, De La Cruz said he took his constituents to meet with the Labor Department, the White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson, presenting them with proposed legislation and encouraging the administration to change its stance on immigration enforcement.

“Resources are limited, period. And we want those limited resources to be focused on the worst of the worst, the criminal immigrants coming in,” De La Cruz said. “We have legal immigrants in our district who have work visas and do not want to work because some of them may be afraid of the process that is currently being carried out.”

But De La Cruz’s shift in messaging also sparked skepticism from some industry leaders and frustration among the grassroots, underscoring the political tightrope he will have to walk come November.

Guerrero, a leader in the nonprofit construction industry, said he senses political opportunism in De La Cruz’s new interest in helping his industry.

“People feel abandoned because you never show your face, and now you want to show your face when there is a real crisis?” Guerrero said. “Like, man, it’s a little late, man.”

Meanwhile, the MAGA base does not like this change either. Patricio County GOP Chairman Rex Warner thinks De La Cruz is being too lenient on deportation. “I agree with some of it, but very few,” he said.