In Texas, voters placed “I Voted” stickers at Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s memorial, honoring a man whose life was taken by the very government he had no vote to choose. The act captured the spirit of a movement that has taken hold in Latino communities across the country: We vote because they can’t.
For immigrant and mixed-status communities, this month’s Democratic victories represent something much bigger than party politics. They represent the possibility of accountability, a restoration of constitutional protection, and perhaps a shift in how this country treats the people who have long lived in its shadows.
As an immigration attorney who served inside the enforcement system under three presidential administrations, and now represents the people facing it, I keep being asked one question: what changes now?
The path ahead may be difficult, but the work necessary is clear. Restoring constitutional protections for noncitizens requires meaningful limits on immigration enforcement. That begins with confronting what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops,” following Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, which opened the door to immigration stops based on a combination of factors, including perceived ethnicity, language, occupation and location.
Democrats have demanded accountability following the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and the shooting of Marimar Martinez by immigration officials. With majority control, they will have the oversight powers and authority over funding to turn those demands into action: insisting on independent investigations into excessive force, unlawful arrests and constitutional rights violations, and pressing for referrals to prosecutors where the evidence warrants criminal charges.
Sustained scrutiny is essential to changing an enforcement culture within a Department of Homeland Security that has operated with little meaningful restraint since January 2025.
But perhaps the biggest change in immigration enforcement won’t come from the federal government — it will come from state and local officials. Gina Hinojosa’s election as Texas’s first Latina governor carries particular weight in a state that has become a battleground over immigration. While she cannot rewrite federal immigration law, she can influence how Texas helps enforce it.
One program to watch closely is Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to authorize state and local officers to perform certain federal immigration enforcement functions.
These partnerships have expanded dramatically as the administration pushes to increase immigration arrests, with a publicly stated goal of 3,000 a day. They extend immigration enforcement into everyday policing, turning traffic stops for minor violations into potential pathways to detention and deportation. For many noncitizens, a trip to buy coffee can end in family separation through ICE detention and deportation.
Hinojosa voted against Senate Bill 8 in June 2025 as a Texas lawmaker, opposing a mandate requiring Texas sheriffs whose counties operate or contract for a jail to enter immigration enforcement agreements with ICE. But undoing that expansion will require more than an executive order. State law, existing agreements and sheriffs’ independent authority limit what she can accomplish alone.
Those limits do not make her powerless. Hinojosa has argued that border security does not require targeting longtime members of our communities. She can put that distinction into practice by pressing lawmakers to repeal mandatory 287(g) participation, scrutinizing state spending, and challenging the use of Texas resources in abusive enforcement operations. The question now is how far she will go — and whether the legislature will follow.
The road ahead will not be easy. President Trump could veto federal immigration reform legislation. His administration could further delay the adjudication of affirmative immigration petitions, including marriage-based petitions that allow families to remain together. His enforcement policies could continue to face little restraint.
And we may not see fewer people funneled into immigration court just yet. But with sustained pressure, we could begin to see fewer people detained, fewer deaths and more humane conditions for those who remain in custody. A secure border does not require abandoning due process or accepting cruelty as the cost of enforcement.
As Democrats revel in the aftermath of the blue tsunami, they must not take their attention away from the work that immigrant communities elected them to do. “We vote because they can’t” is a promise that must be extended beyond Election Day.
Veronica Cardenas is a former assistant chief counsel for ICE turned immigration attorney and founder of Humanigration.
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