Latino support for President Donald Trump has fallen nationally since last February, but two Latino Republicans KUER first interviewed after the 2024 election still give the president five stars after his first year back in office.
Orem resident Arturo Morales-Llan was one of roughly half of Utah’s Latino voters who went for Trump in 2024. At the time, he looked forward to a better economy and tighter border security.
On those promises, he feels the president has delivered. Morales-Llan said he feels good about his budget lately.
“We see a big difference, absolutely overall, in groceries and everything else,” he said, noting he paid less for meat for his Christmas carne asada than in previous months.
Gas prices are down 15% in the Provo-Orem area, where Morales-Llan lives, compared to this time last year. While inflation slowed in December, many groceries cost more than they did a year ago, in part due to Trump’s tariffs.
Still, Morales-Llan believes tariffs have been a boon for the economy. Tariffs, including the higher ones imposed by Trump after April, earned the government roughly $264.05 billion for 2025, according to U.S. Treasury statements. However, importers within the United States pay the tariffs and often pass them on to the consumer. The nonprofit Tax Foundation found the average tax increase per U.S. household in 2025 due to tariffs was $1,100.
As a longtime real estate agent, Morales-Llan likes the president’s proposal to ban Wall Street corporations from buying single-family homes. And he’s glad to see interest rates at their lowest point since 2022.
He’s also a fan of the president’s international policy, repeating Trump’s claim that he has ended eight wars. (That claim is a stretch, as detailed by The Associated Press — it includes some conflicts that were not wars.)
Hamilton Ruiz, who was chair of the Utah Republican Latino Coalition before the group dissolved due to lack of attendance and differing opinions, echoed Morales-Llan’s praise for the president’s handling of the border and the economy. While unauthorized border crossings were already trending down, they hit their lowest numbers since the 1970s under the second Trump administration.
He’s also glad to see the increase in immigration enforcement.
After the election, Ruiz told KUER he viewed Trump’s talk of mass deportations as a negotiating tactic. Removing people would be expensive and difficult, he said, and it could damage an economy that depends on immigrant work.
Now, though, Ruiz said the expense is worth it.
“It's millions of dollars coming out of our pockets, which is still expensive, but I think is necessary by the fact that we have a lot of registered offenders, and those are the ones that we're focusing on.”
July’s Big Beautiful Bill allocated $165 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That money is being used to hire thousands of new agents and fund 80,000 additional detention beds, among other things.
While Homeland Security touts its arrests of the “worst of the worst” on its website and social media, that’s not the full picture.
Seventeen percent of people arrested by ICE in Utah from February through mid-October 2025 had not been accused or convicted of a crime, according to federal government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by KUER. Another 28% had pending charges, and 55% had criminal charges, which is higher than the national average. Nationally, about one-third of those arrested have no criminal record or pending charges.
Being in the U.S. without legal status is a civil, not criminal, offense.
Ruiz said that doesn’t shake his support for Trump’s policy.
“There's a lot of good people that are here in the country, and they're trying to find a way in, right?” he said. “But unfortunately, we don't have a way to pick and choose. So we grab whoever doesn't have any papers, and we basically send them back to their country.”
As a member of the National Guard, Ruiz said he is ready to go if called to help with immigration enforcement.
Most Latino Trump voters still support the president, but the percentage fell from 93% in February 2025 to 81% in September, according to the Pew Research Center. The president’s approval rating, as of Jan. 8, sits at 40% overall and 81% among Republicans. Overall, 59% of U.S. adults disapprove of his performance.
Arturo Morales-Llan said he has friends on both sides of the issue, including one friend who avoids large gatherings because he’s afraid of being picked up by ICE.
“It's for the good of the country, not for the good of my family or my friends,” Morales-Llan said.
He said it’s important to comply with the law, like he did when he became a citizen. Five years ago, he married a woman in the Philippines and has been working to bring her to the U.S. legally ever since, he said, even though it would have been easier to fly her to Mexico and have her cross the border.
“I had every reason to do it. I could use all kinds of emotions. This is my wife, and I have the right, you name it,” he said. “But again, I practice what I preach.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
