Latino Protesters Push Immigration Focus at Austin Anti-Trump Rally

From the Texas Capitol grounds, listening to "No Kings" protest speeches, Karina Reyes made a split-second decision.

Having not heard any mention of the immigration raids that had prompted her attendance to Saturday’s protest in Austin, the 22-year-old helped form a circle of demonstrators on 11th Street and Congress Avenue, just south of the Capitol’s promenade, and played into a megaphone the recorded yells of children and parents being separated during immigration arrests. The crowd went silent.

"This is the sad reality that’s going on," Reyes said. "We need to change."

According to protest organizers, as many as 20,000 demonstrators gathered at the Capitol on Saturday as part of nationally coordinated "No Kings Day" protest campaign. With strong anti-authoritarian messaging, organizers said the protests were held to contrast a military parade President Donald Trump was holding in Washington, D.C.

Amid the cacophony of disgruntled voices and the broad array of redresses, the determination of many Latino protesters to keep the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions front and center proved a struggle. Latino turnout at the protests has been dampened by many immigrants' fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in public spaces. And many Latino protesters said they felt few opportunities to speak about their experiences during the week of protests in Austin.

As local elected officials like Austin City Council Member Zohaib "Zo" Qadri and Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett railed against what they called Trump’s executive overreach in speeches to a large audience on the Capitol steps, a separate face of the protest formed on the southernmost edge of the Capitol complex, playing to the honks of the passing traffic. Here, Mexican flags permeated, a speaker blared norteño band Los Tigres del Norte on loop and anti-ICE chants echoed into the clear sky.

As one protester, 32-year-old Maria Salgado, put it, the crowd on 11th street had a similar, more singular, focus than that of the many other protesters out to reject Trump as "king."

"Our reason is the people they’re taking," Salgado said.

As immigrants steer clear of protests, family members say they attend in their place.

In the past months, Carmen Zuvieta, an Austin-based immigrants’ rights organizer who was active in protests during the first Trump administration, made the decision that she wouldn’t attend demonstrations against Trump no matter how she felt. Zuvieta, a U.S. permanent resident, said the risk of arrest or of legal action against those who were not citizens appears too great. ICE has arrested at least one prominent non-citizen immigrant rights activist thus far in a move the activist’s supporters have called politically motivated.

Zuvieta stayed away from Saturday’s protest, where she hoped the generation of U.S.-born Latinos would represent her as she has seen in recent demonstrations.

"That makes me proud," Zuvieta said in Spanish. "But I also feel pain because I think (these family members) have a lot of pain in them."

On Saturday, the protesters clad in Mexico jerseys and waving Mexican, Salvadoran and Honduran flags chanted and conversed mostly in English. Many, like Salgado, who came with two of her nieces, said they felt obliged to turn out as family members of non-citizen immigrants because "there are few of us who can go out without fear." It was a sense of responsibility that Salgado said overruled her hesitations about how much she could accomplish by protesting.

Amid chorus of competing voices, Latino protesters struggle to amplify message

On Monday, Monica Maldonado left anti-ICE protests in downtown Austin with a sense of disillusionment. Maldonado hadn’t seen a Latino speak during that day’s speeches, and also felt let down by the eventual vandalism and confrontations between protesters and law enforcement around the J.J. Pickle federal building that night. Those Monday protests resulted in 13 arrests and the Texas Department of Public Safety deploying pepper spray.

"The focus became on disorder versus the struggle of our people and giving hope," said Maldonado, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father. "Our concerns, our hopes: that was not the platform that was set there."

A spokesperson for the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the group that organized the Monday protests, did not respond to a Statesman request for comment.

Maldonado’s frustration and her concern that the decisions of many non-Latino protesters may affect the reputation of immigrants prompted her to post a statement on the Instagram account of a local Latino arts nonprofit that she directs. In the post, Maldonado called the escalation of Monday’s protests "performative," attracting a debate among more than a dozen users over the ethics of aggravating demonstrations and whether law enforcement or demonstrators were to blame.

Maldonado hoped Saturday's demonstration provided Latino protesters with a platform to speak about the effects of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement. Though she didn’t hear the speeches she was hoping for, she found the community she needed in the crowd on 11th Street. Wrapped in a Mexican flag and wearing a long black dress similar to those used in Mexican folkloric dance, Maldonado joined in on several dance circles.

It’s where Reyes ended up, too, having walked down from the Capitol steps.

"I haven’t been able to sleep, to eat. This is affecting me, and I am a U.S. citizen," said Reyes, a stay-at-home mother. "So I can imagine how others will feel."

Josh Diaz, Reyes’ 24-year-old boyfriend who works in construction, said he was spurred to protest by weeks of frustration from seeing the apprehension of coworkers who feared immigration enforcement at worksites.

Neither Reyes nor Diaz had attended protests before Monday, but after stomaching the frustration of watching immigration enforcement actions play out over the past month and feeling a sense of voice from protesting this week, the couple said they expected to attend many more.