As state Rep. James Talarico ramps up his outreach to Latino voters in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett is following suit with visits this week to a migrant detention center in Dilley and a campaign rally in the Rio Grande Valley.
With Election Day less than three weeks out, the two Democrats are increasingly courting the key voting bloc of Latino Texans, who make up about a third of the typical Democratic primary electorate. Public polling released Thursday found Talarico leading Crockett by 10 percentage points among Latino voters who are likely to vote in the March 3 primary, a far narrower margin than in earlier surveys.
Recommended Videos
Crockett, D-Dallas, on Wednesday visited an immigrant detention center in Dilley, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. The operation has prompted fierce backlash among Minnesotans and rare pushback from elected Republicans in Washington after federal agents fatally shot an ICU nurse during a confrontation.
Alongside other congressional and state legislative Democrats, Crockett demanded the release of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy who was detained along with his father in Minnesota and brought to Texas last week by federal immigration officials.
At a news conference after the detention center visit, Crockett said she met with Liam and his father, as well as other children held there, who told the lawmakers they were being given poor drinking water and did not have access to schooling.
“The treatment these people are suffering under right now is worse than those that are accused and sometimes even convicted of crimes,” the Dallas Democrat said. “We are supposed to be better than this.”
She urged Senate Democrats not to approve legislation sent over by the House that would continue funding the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, beyond this week. On Thursday, ahead of Friday’s 11:59 p.m. deadline to fund the government, Senate Democrats struck a deal with the White House to continue funding DHS at current levels for two more weeks as they negotiate restrictions on the department’s immigration enforcement actions, while funding a large portion of the government for the rest of the fiscal year.
As of December, just over half of Latino Texans — including Republicans — polled by the Texas Politics Project said they thought the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts had “gone too far,” compared to 25% who said it has been “about right” and 16% who said it has “not gone far enough.”
On Thursday, Crockett headlined a rally in McAllen — the biggest city in Hidalgo County, where more than nine in 10 residents are Latino — alongside Ada Cuellar, an emergency physician running in the Democratic primary for Texas’ 15th Congressional District. Cuellar is facing off against Tejano music star Bobby Pulido, who was endorsed by Talarico, D-Austin, at a rally in December.
The winner will take on Republican U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who Democrats see as perhaps their only realistic target out of Texas’ 25 GOP-controlled House seats. Latino Texans make up 81% of the district, which stretches from the southern border to a rural swath east of San Antonio.
Thursday’s event was a bit of a dueling rally in both the Senate and congressional races, with Crockett and Cuellar endorsing each other just over a month after Talarico and Pulido appeared side-by-side and endorsed each other at a rally in Weslaco.
Cuellar has positioned herself to the left of Pulido, criticizing his personal opposition to abortion and attacking him for living part-time in Mexico City and calling himself a “winter Texan.”
Pulido, who is running as a centrist, has said he opposes Texas’ near-total abortion ban and believes people should have access to the procedure, but personally opposes it because of his Catholic faith.
In a statement, Pulido spokesperson Marsha Espinosa added, “Bobby Pulido was born and raised in South Texas and lives in Edinburg, where he’s raising his family — that’s home. Like many families, they also spend time, including in the summer, visiting his wife’s family in Mexico City, because staying close to family is a good thing.”
Crockett’s move to line up opposite Talarico in the 15th District comes in the closing weeks of a campaign where the candidates have done little thus far to draw contrasts with each other. Their differences have centered more on matters of style, with both embracing progressive stances on key issues. In a recent debate, Crockett took aim at Talarico for being “not as known right now” and taking campaign cash from a GOP donor who wants to legalize casinos — the only examples of real friction during the hourlong debate.
On the stage in McAllen, Crockett urged the crowd to “think about the generations that you’re fighting for, and think about the generations that fought for you.”
“Let that be your inspiration,” she said. “Let that be your guide to make sure that we make this country a lot better than we ever thought that it could be.”
In condemning ICE at the rally, Crockett described seeing a pregnant woman detained in Dilley and a woman “crying in pain” who did not appear to be receiving medical care.
“These people need advocates. This was the very first time there was a glimmer of hope in their eyes,” she said, adding that her staffers’ phones were ringing nonstop with calls from family members of detainees thanking her for helping them.
“We consistently help those that are struggling, even though they’re outside of my district, because we have a lot of people on the federal level that don’t want to do their jobs,” she said. “I am beyond tired of the politics of division. It is beyond time for us to come together.”
In her outreach to Latino Texans, Crockett has also begun putting out press statements and social media posts in Spanish. On Wednesday, she released an ad in English and Spanish that highlights her opposition to ICE, support for impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and work to “rein in” ICE.
Crockett has faced criticism for year-old comments she made to Vanity Fair saying that some Latino Texans’ anti-immigrant attitudes were “almost like a slave mentality,” and over a remark in which she suggested the country needed migrants because “we’re done picking cotton.”
Asked about her comments by The Texas Tribune at a campaign event this month, Crockett said, “there was never an intent to actually offend somebody.”
“Before I was elected, and through all of my elections, I have always stood with all people,” she said.
Talarico has moved to shore up his support among Latino voters by buying air time for a Spanish-language TV ad that played last week in nearly a dozen of the state’s largest media markets. He also launched new social media channels that will promote his message in Spanish and feature Spanish-speaking content creators.