The United States opens this Monday the celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month in a 2025 marked by immigration raids, which have hit this community hard and fuel the perception that Latinos are no longer seen as an essential part of the country.
“We are going through one of the most difficult times for Hispanics in this country,” says Nicolás Kanellos, a professor at the University of Houston. “We can say that in general all Hispanics in the United States, citizens or not, are afraid of being arrested in a public place,” adds the professor in an interview with EFE.
Fear and discrimination
The academic speaks from his own experience with immigration raids.
He confesses that he is afraid that he or his son might be questioned just because of the color of his skin on the streets of Texas.
Whose Republican government has become one of the main allies of Donald Trump’s administration and its anti-immigrant policies.
She says that her son has already been the target of unjustified detentions based on racial discrimination by the authorities of that state.
Current raids, the most dangerous
“It’s much more dangerous now to be Latino than in previous years,” says the New York-born professor with Puerto Rican roots.
Comparing Trump’s immigration policy to those of decades past, Kanellos says current immigration raids are “far, far more intense and dangerous” than those that occurred in the Depression of 1929.
Or the “Wetbacks” operation in the 1950s, which targeted Hispanics.
“What distinguishes and makes this era more dangerous are the methods that have been adopted because they are identified with fascist regimes, such as using masked government agents, people being taken away in unmarked vehicles and immigrants being practically kidnapped,” says the professor.
Civil rights at risk in the U.S.
In that sense, Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS, the largest national advocacy organization for the Hispanic community in the United States, tells EFE that we are living in a time when the basic civil rights “of everyone, not just Hispanics,” are at risk.
“That diminishes confidence in our institutions and democracy,” the activist told EFE.
The economic and electoral impact
For Raúl Hinojosa, professor of Chicano Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month will also be watered down by the economic impact that this community is suffering due to Trump’s immigration policy.
The California expert predicts that the Latino GDP growth that has been occurring in the United States will come to a halt.
A recent report by UCLA and Cal Lutheran found that that value for Latinos in the country reached an all-time high in 2023 at $4.1 trillion.
That year it was the fifth largest in the world in comparison with other economies and surpassed India, the United Kingdom and France.
“We will hardly sustain this pace in 2025, which also affects the country’s overall economy,” Hinojosa anticipates.
Alert warns of attempt to erase Latino identity
The difficult panorama is compounded by the elimination of the Spanish language from governmental platforms, warns Nicolás Kanellos, founder of Arte Público Press.
After almost five decades of operation, it has become the largest and oldest publisher of Latin literature in the country.
The professor blames these decisions on the “whitening” strategy of U.S. society.
Also on the list of challenges is the congressional redistricting being pushed by the Trump Administration.
In the case of Texas, it will affect Latino communities the most, according to several lawsuits filed against that state’s recently passed law.
However, Kanellos assures that the history of Hispanics is longer in “these lands” than even that of the colonists who founded the United States.
“They can’t erase our history with one stroke, that’s impossible.”
Call to defend the rights of Latinos
For his part, Murguía sends a message to continue the struggle and vindicate the contributions of this community.
“We are not going to stand idly by while they take away our rights, we are not going to remain silent….”.
“Going forward, we know that when our community prospers, the entire nation prospers,” he said (EFE).
For more information, visit QuéOnnda.com.
