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How growing up in the U.S. immigration system shapes how these young Americans vote
Left to right: Lucero Lopez, Jasmine Perez Moreno, Josue Rodriguez, Raneem Le Roux, and Jossue Ureno pose for a portrait at The Leroy and Lucile Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Houston.
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As Vice President Harris charts the course for a campaign that tries to avoid the missteps of her predecessor, President Biden, she may inherit some of his baggage with the groups she most needs to win over.
Voters under 30, for example, backed Biden in big numbers in 2020. But, as polling reflected, he has struggled with the group throughout his presidency.
Support from another major part of Biden’s winning coalition — voters of color — had also frayed in differing amounts for different reasons. One such group that has struggled with Biden’s policies are those who have experienced the U.S. immigration system.
Former President Donald Trump has made immigration the cornerstone of his platform, publicly disparaging and attacking immigrants since he first announced in 2015. He’s vowed to carry out historically large deportations, but how those pledges would be implemented is unclear.
Republicans have repeatedly criticized Biden for upticks in border crossings during his presidency. But Biden’s immigration policy has been complicated. In June, the president restricted border crossings, including for people seeking asylum, via executive order. Weeks later, he took steps to increase relief for undocumented people and recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Lucero Lopez, 29, is a college student studying political science. As a main support for her parents in the U.S., she’s concerned about rising prices. “I’m the one who basically helps my parents,” she said. “I see how everything is racing.”
Joseph Bui for NPR/NPR
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In February, the White House and congressional leaders also came close to agreeing on a bipartisan bill that would have increased restrictions on the border, but it failed after Trump urged Republicans to reverse course and oppose it.
Biden’s willingness to work with Republicans on the legislation alarmed immigrant advocates and organizers, including Nicole Melaku of the National Association of New Americans.
“It’s going to be a really hard recovery to build back the trust of the immigrant constituency,” she told NPR in an interview before Biden announced he would be dropping out of the presidential race.
As part of its focus on new voters, NPR spoke to five young people under the age of 30 who have all existed within the immigration system and discussed how their upbringings affect their politics today.
Lucero Lopez, 29, is a natural-born citizen whose parents came to the U.S. undocumented. Her father has since become a citizen, and her mom has legal status, but Lopez also has two older sisters who haven’t been able to leave Mexico. This has placed a financial and emotional burden on her.
“I never understood, why always me?” she explained. “I didn’t understand that I was the one who had to take care of [my parents] and still is taking care of them.”
Josue Rodriguez, 28, immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico when he was a child. He is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Rodriguez now dedicates his work to helping people who are homeless, something he experienced with his family.
“That really has been what’s driven me,” he said. “How can we look at public policy and understand their impacts? Make sure that we have lived experiences within that space.”
Raneem Le Roux, 27, and her family immigrated to the U.S. from Syria. She was able to get naturalized as a child but also went on to help her father, who struggled to pass the citizenship test.
“I would burn CDs for him, telling him the questions in English and the answers in English, and then translating them in Arabic,” she recalled. “He used to do trucking, so he used to drive at night and just listen to them.”
Raneem Le Roux, 27, works at a youth-led immigrant advocacy organization. She divided her family into “two immigrant stories,” describing it as the “family I come from — their story — and the family that I hope to create.”
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Jasmine Parish Moreno, 23, is the child of Iranian and Mexican immigrants who both spent more than a decade navigating the U.S. immigration system before eventually becoming citizens. Her father was able to vote for the first time in 2020, which was also the first year Parish Moreno was eligible to cast a ballot.
“I think for years afterwards [he] carried his ‘I voted sticker’ like on his phone case because he was so proud of it,” she said.
Jossue Ureno, 22, is a natural-born citizen whose parents first immigrated from Mexico more than 20 years ago. They are still undocumented, and he spoke about how their status has limited their ability to be with family back in Mexico, describing when his dad had to watch a family funeral over the phone.
“Seeing the heartbreak in his eyes of him wanting to be there but not being able to be there,” he said. “Not being able to have one last goodbye, especially since he hadn’t seen them for like over ten years, was definitely something that, it still sticks with me.”
Read more of their conversation below. These responses have been edited for clarity and length.
On voting this year
Of those in the group eligible to vote in 2020, all cast their ballots for Biden, though several were disappointed in aspects of his leadership and cautioned Harris to set a different path.
Some argued that Biden’s handling of issues related to immigration and the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas war have made it difficult to immediately support Harris. But for these young people, voting is essential.
Le Roux: As someone who voted for [Biden] in hope of protecting my community, my family and immigrants in the U.S., he failed. … I can only hope that Harris at least learns from those mistakes … I’m very torn because part of me doesn’t want to vote for a nominee that continues to profit and encourage foreign policies that result in human costs and dead bodies that look like me. But at the same time, I don’t want the minimal protections I do have for me and my partner, both in terms of her immigrant status and LGBT protections, to be lost.
Moore: I’ve talked to folks around the country, young people who lean Democratic, … who were debating sitting out of this race when it was Biden versus Trump. … How does the idea of skipping an election or skipping the top of the ticket feel to you?
Parish Moreno: We can’t afford to sit this out. We’re in a unique situation because we’ve seen already what the Trump presidency was like. … And so to sit this race out would be to kind of gamble with it and risk returning to that.
Jasmine Parish Moreno, 23, is a graduate student aiming to work in immigrant advocacy and policy. It’s a goal influenced by her own family’s immigration story.
Joseph Bui for NPR/NPR
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Moore: Raneem, I see you nodding.
Le Roux: Yes, I am nodding because I do agree for the most part with you, Jasmine … It’s our responsibility and in our community’s interests, all our communities, immigrants, as women, as members of the LGBT community, to ensure that Trump doesn’t get elected.
On Trump and his political impact
While these young people generally don’t support Trump, they come from families who have different political opinions on how another Trump presidency could affect their communities.
Parish Moreno: Just because my parents are now citizens doesn’t take away the fact that they were immigrants, doesn’t take away the fact that my dad’s a Muslim man in America, doesn’t take away the fact that under the Trump presidency, my family wasn’t able to come visit because of the Muslim ban that Trump enacted. … I’m a first-generation American. So I try to tell in my head that I have every right to take up space and to speak and have my voice heard as someone who is like a 10th-generation American, but it’s hard.
Ureno: I find this to be a very tough question. … After now going through a Biden presidency, my parents themselves have actually said to me and my brothers, … ‘When Trump was in office, inflation was down. Everything was cheaper. It seemed to be like the world, the United States was more at peace.’ … My parents feel that because of the situation that’s going down in the southern border, that that’s actually hindering them. And so because of that, they’re like, honestly, Trump, he handled it better. … Now that Harris is running, I don’t know what their stance is.
Moore: Your parents are still trying to become citizens here. They’re not. Trump has threatened to deport millions of people. And how does that square with them?
Ureno: My parents are like, he’s just fear mongering, he’s just pandering. He’s trying to get the vote. They don’t really – they’re like, ‘You said it the first time you didn’t do it with the unified Congress. How are you going to do it this time?’
Jossue Ureno, 22, works for a Latino voter advocacy organization. Watching the national debate about immigration since the 2016 election has affected his professional goals. “It’s what’s making me want to pursue becoming an immigration attorney in the coming years,” he explained.
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On what they want from politicians moving forward
Lopez: They always use [immigration] as a pawn. We are not pawns. We are people.
Rodriguez: We know that there’s more asylum claims coming through the border. What are their stories? They don’t talk about their stories. They just talk about the numbers. … I wish the Democrats would call the bluff that the Republicans are doing so that we can start humanizing people.
Moore: If you had to meet with [Harris,] what would be your message to her?
Lopez: Call for a cease-fire. Immediately. That’s the one thing that I will say.
Parish Moreno: I know, especially with Joe Biden, there was a lot of minority communities that were mobilizing to get him elected. So, just don’t forget who got you into that power seat.
Ureno: Bipartisanship. That’s how you get stuff done in Congress. If you want to see real results, sometimes, you may not like it, but that’s how politics works. You got to work with the other party to get stuff done.
Moore: Was there an issue that we didn’t hit on?
Rodriguez: I would just mention like, with deferred action, DACA. The program itself is technically ending and we’re waiting on a court ruling. So, just kind of putting that at the forefront, too, that I could become undocumented tomorrow if the court goes against it. So I just kind of want to make sure that that’s still at the forefront of the conversation.
As a DACA recipient, Josue Rodriguez, 28, is not able to vote. But he urged the group to vote against a second Trump term. “It really doesn’t matter who [the Democratic nominee] is,” he said. “As long as [Trump] is not voted back into office, because that will solidify the new version of the Republican Party.”
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On what voting means to them
Lopez: For me, it’s such a weight. I have my aunt, she’s an immigrant, and she’s the one who’s always, like, go vote for me. You – I know, sorry. But just hearing it from her because she can’t do it. That’s why it carries so much weight for me.
Rodriguez: The one link I have on my Instagram is how to register to vote. So that tells you that, yes, voting is very dear and near to me. … I know in my bones that one day, I’ll be able to vote. But even now, I mean, it’s getting to the point where friends come to me for suggestions or for just insights into people running for office. And I’m blessed to be an asset to them. And I like to think that through me and my opinions and my standpoints, they’ve been able to be educated. And I’m comfortable with that for now.
This conversation was recorded at Houston Public Media, with engineering from Todd Hulslander of Houston Public Media.
News
Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
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