Latino leaders are taking more prominent roles in local government as voters respond to what political science experts and Latino officials describe as intensifying attacks and rhetoric aimed at Latino communities during President Donald Trump’s second term, including actions tied to immigration enforcement. The Associated Press reported April 27 that the pressure has not prevented Latinos from pursuing elective office and high-level government posts—in some cases, it has helped spur more candidates to run and more voters to turn out.
Political science experts cited by the AP said the increase in Latino leadership reflects years of grassroots organizing alongside continuing demonization of Latino communities by Trump administration officials and conservative activists. Anna Sampaio, an ethnic studies professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in race and gender politics, said the present moment differs because the attacks have become more relentless and more visible to Latino residents nationwide.
Sampaio described how the heightened environment can change whether people see elective politics as a viable place to defend their communities, saying: “That’s the difference now, is that there’s this extra incentive of an unrelenting attack on Latinos across the country,” the AP reported. In the same reporting, the AP said data from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials estimates that Latinos hold about 7,700 elected offices nationwide, up from 6,883 officials in 2020.
The AP said Latinos—estimated to number as many as 55 million people, or 16% of the U.S. population—remain underrepresented across elective offices despite their size. It also said Latino political participation is shaped by a broader landscape in which Latino communities have faced what it described as hard-line immigration tactics since the beginning of Trump’s second term, along with other initiatives and political messaging that cast Latinos as stereotypes to be targeted.
Within that environment, the AP reported that legislators have proposed measures that include protections for community members against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stopping the approval of ICE detention centers in some cities, and calling for a stop to ICE funding. Officials and advocates framed those efforts as a response to a sense of attack that extends beyond policy to public messaging, including government-linked rhetoric and related initiatives.
The reporting highlighted several election and swearing-in moments in early 2026, beginning in Pennsylvania. In Lancaster, officials elected Jaime Arroyo to become the city’s first Latino mayor; he took office in January after winning with 85% of the vote. Arroyo told the AP that being the first Latino and the first person of color to lead Lancaster City had been “exciting,” and he said he finds it “extremely exciting to lead and represent our community in this role.”
Arroyo also linked the growing interest in Latino leadership to political pressure and long-term organizing. He said rhetoric and national policies, including heightened immigration enforcement, have made representation more important “than ever,” and he told the AP that rising Latino officeholding is tied to generations of Latinos being politically active in fights for civil rights. “We’re starting to see a lot of the fruits of that labor come to fruition,” Arroyo said, adding that “there’s never a perfect time to serve your community” and that the current moment is “the right time for a lot of Latinos to step up into these roles, especially with everything that is going on.”
The AP described additional local milestones across multiple states, with several Latino leaders taking office as first-time or historic members of city councils. In Iowa, Rob Barron was sworn in on Jan. 12 as the first Latino representative on the Des Moines City Council. In Conyers, Georgia, Antonio Pacheco was sworn in Jan. 7 as the first Latino member of the city council, and in Ohio, Eileen Torres became the first Mexican American woman to win a city council seat in Lorain, while Sabrina Gonzalez took office there as the first Puerto Rican woman to serve.
In Michigan, the AP said Clara Martinez and Deyanira Nevarez Martinez were sworn in on Jan. 1 to the Lansing City Council, making it the first U.S. city council with majority Latino representation. The AP reported that Martinez said her election and Nevarez Martinez’s election show “what people are truly open to despite the national rhetoric,” and she added that that backlash has helped “fuel[] the fire” for people to step forward.
Further west, the AP said the Salt Lake City Council has a Latino majority, with four of seven seats after Erika Carlsen—described as the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants—was sworn in on Jan. 5. Carlsen told the AP that her success builds on earlier generations of leadership and said she sees representation at the local level as important even if federal-level visibility remains limited. She said: “I think that it’s critically important that we continue to build on this momentum,” and she argued that “the majority of change that can happen starts locally,” in places like City Hall, school boards, and neighborhood conversations.
The AP also included perspectives from organizations that help candidates, including Carolina Welles, executive director of The First Ask, which supports first-time female candidates at the state level. Welles told the AP that local Latino leaders can build trust in part because they are close to the same community concerns, saying, “They actually know what people care about,” and that “They have a stake because they are facing similar things.”
Beyond city hall, the AP said Latino gains also continue at higher levels of government, including the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. It reported that the 119th Congress has 56 Hispanic or Latino members, and it noted that at the start of 2025 there were seven Hispanic U.S. senators, dropping to six when Sen. Marco Rubio resigned to become secretary of state. It also said record numbers of Latinas held state legislative seats last year, and it pointed to state executive leadership, including New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham as the only active Latina governor at the time of the reporting and Gina Hinojosa’s nomination win as the second Latina to secure a major-party gubernatorial nomination in Texas.
Sampaio told the AP that the biggest rise in elected officials during the Trump administration came as a response to attacks on Latino communities’ fundamental rights, and she said she expects that trend to continue as the administration’s actions continue. She described that outcome as a pattern that both terrifies some Latino residents and mobilizes others, saying in the AP report that “We’re likely to see more Latinos run for office at the local level, at the state level and even at the national level in response to the attack on simply their existence,” and that the result is “unwittingly both terrorizing the Latino community as well as mobilizing communities.”