WESLACO, Texas — Slowly pushing a shopping cart down the aisle at a Walmart Supercenter in this remote border town, Nivia was initially reluctant to talk politics.

But when asked how the past two years have been for her and her community under the Trump administration’s policies, the 48-year-old Latina resident unloaded.

“Screwed up,” fumed Nivia, who, like others we talked to, requested only using her first name. “Where do I even start? Everything is wrong with ICE. Innocent people taken away, families torn apart. Everything’s just worse, everything’s so expensive. And the pay rate doesn’t go up.”

She lives in the nearby town of Alamo, one of many heavily Latino communities in the Rio Grande Valley, which stretches along the southern border of the United States and Mexico. Residents here have historically been Democratic voters, until 2024, when they broke with a decadeslong pattern and helped elect President Donald Trump.

Nivia was one of those voters. At the time, she was hopeful Trump was going to make the economy better. She thought he would focus his aggressive immigration enforcement tactics on violent criminals. Instead, the costs of groceries and gas have gone way up, and good people she’s known personally have been taken from their families and deported.

“I regret it,” she said of her vote for Trump. “I guess I was blindsided.”

The regret Nivia is experiencing is common throughout the Rio Grande Valley, a region that has become symbolic of the destruction of Trump’s 2024 coalition, which Republicans were so confident would hold together that they redrew the area’s congressional lines last year, believing the conservative lean of the region’s Latino voters was a new fact of politics.

Instead, residents have revolted, angry about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, high prices and everything else. Their rebellion could mean three congressional districts the GOP state Legislature drew to be solidly Republican instead go to Democrats. Voter turnout in the area is expected to be high and could power state Reps. James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa to victory in the state’s U.S. Senate and governor’s races, making them the first Democrats elected statewide in three decades.

Both sides of the political aisle are treating the region as crucial: Talarico, Hinojosa and Democratic congressional candidate Bobby Pulido campaigned in Weslaco last weekend. Vice President JD Vance headlined a campaign event in September in Harlingen.

Interviews with nearly two dozen voters in the valley about Trump, their lives over the past two years and how they plan to vote in the midterms yielded a litany of complaints like Nivia’s: anger at high prices, anger at ICE’s presence and a feeling they were duped by a billionaire president.

Like most residents we talked to, Nivia said she definitely plans to vote and is backing Talarico. She said it’s in part because of her anger at Trump’s recklessness, doing things like demolishing the East Wing of the White House — “he should be in a mental institution” — and in part because she sees Republican candidate Ken Paxton as corrupt. Paxton, the sitting attorney general, was previously indicted on felony charges of securities fraud, and impeached by his own party on 20 counts of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust.

“Ken Paxton, I mean, he’s the one charged for bribery? It’s obvious you’re an idiot if you choose that guy,” she said. “How is it he didn’t get kicked out on the first day? I think once you break a law, you should just automatically be out, you’re fired.”

Linda, 75, said she’ll be voting for a straight Democratic ticket. A resident of Mercedes, she voted for Trump twice in the past but has soured on him and the GOP as the costs for her electricity, groceries and gas have gone up. She said her standard grocery bill used to be about $100. Now it’s closer to $300.

“Usually I would be Republican, but now I’m changing all the way around,” she said. “Because of the way the world’s going right now and who’s handling it. It’s not working.”

As for her past support for Trump, “I regret that I did vote for him because I had liked him before, but not anymore. I’m sorry,” Linda added. “I’m finished.”

President Donald Trump's border wall looms over towns in the Rio Grande Valley, literally and figuratively.

Jen Bendery

Anxiety about immigration crackdowns is palpable in the valley. Trump’s border wall is just minutes away from these towns, and it’s easy to take one wrong turn and nearly drive right into Mexico. Customs and Border Patrol agents slowly patrol dirt roads by the wall, and where sections of the wall have been taken down for modifications, National Guard troops sit for hours next to the Rio Grande, watching Mexicans across the river watching them.

The tension is weighing on some Latino voters here. “All that they do with immigrants, it is rough,” said Esteban, 78, of Alamo. “Some of them are killed.”

He didn’t know who Talarico was by name but said he was going to vote for a straight Democratic ticket because he’s unhappy with the high costs of meat and doesn’t like Trump’s immigration tactics: “We’re gonna vote for the guy who’s going to change all that.”

San Juanita Garza, a devout Christian who lives in Donna, said she’ll be voting for Democrats because she’s done seeing ICE tear families apart. She said one of her friends was separated from her husband, who was undocumented and is now in a federal detention center. Garza said he is a hardworking man and a good person, and she’s been trying to help a Christian mariachi band raise money to help him.

“Family is the most powerful treasure we have in life, and he’s separating them,” Garza, 54, said of the president. “Trump is what, a Republican? I’m gonna vote for the Democrats. I’m pro-family, pro-good.”

She said she regularly prays that conditions will get better for immigrants in the United States, many of whom are trying to “do better for ourselves, for our family, for our community and, at the end, for our country.” If the president wants to root out and deport undocumented people, she said, “he should look for the bad people, not the good people.”

To be sure, some voters we talked to said they stood by Trump and planned to vote for Republicans on the ballot. There just weren’t that many of them, and in some cases, they were married to someone not happy with the president.

“He’s trying his best,” Apolonio Gonzales, 63, said of Trump.

“He keeps saying the economy is better,” interrupted his wife, Ana Marie, 64. “Well, our wallets aren’t saying that.”

Both identify as deeply religious, conservative Republicans. They’d just voted that day, but they voted very differently from each other: Apolonio supported all the GOP candidates, while Ana Marie voted for all the Democratic candidates except in the governor’s race.

Paxton “committed fraud,” said Ana Marie, so that’s why she supported Talarico. But the bigger issue to her is that Trump has too much power, and he needs a check.

“He has the House, the Congress, the Senate. No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s just not right,” said Ana Marie. “I voted all the way down Democrat. ... He’s got too much power. So when you create opposition, then he’s not as strong. That’s my main reason for voting like that.”

Supporters listen to Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico speak at the Voto Latino's “Ready. Go. Vote.” campaign rally outside of the Mustang Lounge Night Club on Oct. 25 in Weslaco, Texas.

Brandon Bell via Getty Images

A few people said they didn’t plan to vote. They thought it wouldn’t make a difference.

“If my girl tells me to go, then I’ll go,” Lucio Faz of Weslaco said with a laugh. He said his longtime girlfriend previously voted for Trump but isn’t happy with him now because of “the immigration thing he’s got going on.”

“I’ve never voted,” said another woman, Valerie, 23. It’s a 30-minute drive to the nearest polling station from her home in Alamo, she said, and that’s too far.

Would she vote if there was somewhere to vote in her town? “Probably,” she said.

Annette, a 46-year-old resident of Alamo, was looking at the prices of eggs and juice at an HEB supermarket when we talked. A school secretary with three kids, Annette voted for Trump in 2016 but hasn’t voted since then. She said life got too busy.

“Orange juice used to be $1.25. Minute Maid. Now close to $2,” she said, motioning to drinks in the coolers. She’s not sure if she’ll be voting in the midterms but said her community is unhappy with Trump because he didn’t follow through on his promises.

“There was a check that was going to come in. No one got it,” said Annette, referring to the president last year promising $2,000 tariff “dividends” to Americans. “And a lot of health insurance got cut off.”

Surprisingly, some of the residents with the strongest feelings about voting were young. It’s too early to know how much young voters in Texas will shape these elections, but turnout is generally up in early voting around the state, and there’s already been a noticeable bump in voters younger than 45 casting ballots compared to the 2022 midterm elections.

“I don’t get why you wouldn’t vote,” said Alexandra, 24, who was planning to vote that day, right after her shift at 707 Coffee House in Alamo. She listed by name all of the candidates she was planning to support and said she would be voting Democratic across the board.

“There’s so many reasons to vote,” she said. “Like, the economy. Being a woman. Schools. I have nephews in school, and I don’t know, just the thought of, like, gun safety.”

Alexandra said it seems like older people in the area can be “closed-minded” and that a lot of people “just don’t care” about elections. But her generation “is very engaged,” she said.

Cielo, a 27-year-old lash artist, said she’s definitely voting too: “We’re the ones paying the consequences.”

A display with the word "vote" in Spanish is seen before the start of a midterm campaign rally Oct. 25 in Weslaco, Texas.

GABRIEL V. CARDENAS via Getty Images

Alex Perez, 40, has been torn about voting for years. He has two kids and spends his days working at La Casa Azul Coffee Bar in Weslaco. During a 30-minute conversation, Perez said he doesn’t want to be “that guy” who says voting doesn’t matter, because he knows it matters. He just … feels like it doesn’t matter. The last time he voted was in 2018.

“Every politician that I’ve seen from here, they change and they follow the money,” Perez said. “Like, they can say whatever they want. They can do whatever they want when they get in office, and that’s what speaks. And it just feels like the same story.”

He said a lot of people in his community don’t like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and yet, he keeps being reelected governor: “A lot of the programs and stuff that he’s done have not made this place better.”

In the days after we spoke, Perez emailed to say he may be having a change of heart. He talked about hardships he’s endured and his belief that everyone should vote, even if he hasn’t been. Just talking about politics and elections, he said, is rare for him, and it got him thinking about his role in all of it.

“Thank you for your patience,” Perez wrote.

“P.S. I’m going to look into voting again.”