Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
President Donald Trump is embarking on a marathon of campaign events across the country to try to prevent the opinion polls from coming true and to stop Democrats from taking control of one or both chambers of Congress from the Republicans in the midterm elections on November 3.
Those polls and voters’ own comments seem to confirm that the winds of change are blowing. This includes working-class voters who voted for Trump in the past but are now victims of his public policies, which have led to rising prices for food, gas, goods and services—including those from industries that rely on immigrant workers who have been detained and deported by the Trump administration. It’s the ICE Tax we all pay.
And it’s not just activists and immigrants who are sounding the alarm. Leaders in economic sectors affected by detentions and deportations—whether in healthcare, home care, construction, hotels, restaurants, livestock farming, or agriculture—warn that the loss of immigrant labor is driving up the costs of everything.
“Right now, we’re on a very unsustainable path, because I think that we’re all very much aware that historically, black and brown and diverse people have been a massive part of our food systems. And I feel like we’re going to start to see the strains of this aggression rather quickly because restaurants are going to start closing. We’re feeling like our business is slipping away so quickly,” warned Sean Sherman, a chef, author and restaurant owner in Minneapolis. In this city, the violent ICE ‘Metro Surge’ operation took place, during which two US citizens were shot and killed by ICE agents in separate incidents.
But Trump seems out of touch with the reality Americans face—or worse, he doesn’t care. He claims that complaints about American households struggling to make ends meet are a fabrication by the Democrats.
On Saturday, Trump visited Vandalia, Ohio, a state with one of the most crucial races for the U.S. Senate; if the Democratic candidate, former Senator Sherrod Brown, wins, it could mean the Democrats regain control of the Senate.
A few minutes from Vandalia, in Dayton, Ohio, the Navistar truck factory laid off 1,400 employees three days before Trump’s rally. Kyle Bos is one of them.
“Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did,” wrote The Associated Press.
The layoffs, the AP added, “are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats,” the agency reported.
Bos says he has voted for Trump three times, but now his patience—like his wallet—has run out.
“Something has to change politically in this country. Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse,” Bos said.
“Trump didn’t talk about grocery prices or gas prices or layoffs at his Saturday night rally in Vandalia,” the article states.
But voters seem clear on who to blame. Nationally, just 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.
The support Trump garnered from Latino voters in 2024 seems to be slipping through his fingers.
An October 4 NBC News/Telemundo poll of 800 Latino voters found that 74% disapprove of the economic situation under Trump’s administration. “Sixty-five percent said Trump’s policies had hurt the economy, while 23% said they had helped,” NBC News Los Angeles reported.
Likewise, 67% said the Trump administration has gone too far with its immigration policy, and 59% said they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress.
One example of this discontent is Florida’s 27th District, a seat held by Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar. In 2024, Trump won that district, but as president, his campaign of detentions, deportations, and the cancellation of programs such as TPS and humanitarian parole has had a severe impact on the residents of this district and their family members who voted for Trump.
Salazar, seeking to protect her own seat, stood up to Trump, even though she has supported his most controversial measures in House votes, such as the multibillion-dollar budget for ICE.
On November 3, we will find out whether Salazar, like others, will survive the election despite her belated challenge to Trump, or whether she and others will become collateral damage of the president’s extreme public policies, such as those on immigration.
The original Spanish version is here.
