Catholic Immigrant Advocates in Texas and Iowa See Midterms as Hope, Not Relief

For Catholic immigrant advocates, the sweeping Democratic victories in the Nov. 3 midterms offered a moment of hope, but not necessarily relief.

“Last night, the country spoke, and the powerful will not soon forget it,” Dylan Corbett, founder and executive director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, Texas, said the morning after the election. “But an election is not a resurrection. The people who died in our detention centers are still dead.”

His words captured the mixed mood among Catholic organizations and volunteers who have spent the past two years accompanying immigrants to detention centers and immigration appointments while the Trump administration intensified its deportation campaign. Their work of standing with people facing enforcement actions reflects a commitment to protecting the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress and captured governorships in states including Texas and Iowa. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa, a Catholic Democrat, defeated three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrat James Talarico also flipped the state’s U.S. Senate seat.

For Corbett, who is also a member of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the results signaled an opportunity for politicians to address the concerns of communities directly affected by immigration enforcement. “Look at who moved: the young, Latino and Asian American families, and Catholics,” he said. “They are the ones who have paid for the last two years, at the kitchen table and in the courtroom.”

The election followed months of evidence that Hispanic Catholics were increasingly dissatisfied with Trump’s immigration policies. An October Pew Research Center survey found that 59% of Hispanic Catholic registered voters preferred Democratic House candidates, compared with 19% who supported Republicans. White Catholics leaned in the opposite direction, favoring Republicans 50% to 32%. After the election, an Associated Press voter survey found that roughly six in 10 Hispanic voters nationwide had supported Democratic candidates. That survey did not establish how Hispanic Catholics specifically voted.

Corbett said the enforcement campaign has touched the Catholic Church itself. “Latino Catholics are not at the edge of the church. They are its beating heart,” he told NCR. “When more than a third of American Catholics are Hispanic, the deportation machine is not running somewhere far away. It is running through our parishes.”

Corbett called for an end to Operation Lone Star, a Texas border security initiative, and said there should be stronger federal oversight, protections for asylum seekers, and immigration legislation that offers long-term residents a path out of legal uncertainty. He also warned that the election would not immediately reverse the substantial federal resources already committed to enforcement. “The money has not moved,” he said, referring to multiyear spending for detention and deportation operations. “It has been appropriated, it is flowing, and no election night will turn it off.”

Hundreds of miles north, immigrant advocates in Iowa described a similar mixture of optimism and urgency. David Goodner, executive director of Escucha Mi Voz, an immigrant-led worker justice organization with strong connections to Catholic communities, said the organization conducted an extensive Latino voter outreach campaign during the election. “We had over 200,000 voter contacts,” Goodner said, adding that the group was still analyzing results. He said organizers had identified two state House districts and two state Senate districts where the number of voters contacted exceeded the winning candidates’ margins, and where seats flipped from Republican to Democratic control.

Source: Read the original report