Jennyfer Mesa, executive director of Latinos en Spokane (LES), said elections are always stressful for “mixed status” communities, in which some people have been in the U.S. for generations — some are documented immigrants and some are undocumented. But, according to Mesa, this year is particularly stressful because of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign threats to implement mass deportations.
“Every election, it’s a worry,” Mesa said. “It’s a worry about what’s going to be changed and what are the risks of new elections. … At the whim of any vote, we can have our rights taken away as immigrants.”
There are very real fears of mass deportation, and even more fears that whoever ends up replacing Cathy McMorris Rodgers — either Republican Michael Baumgartner or Democrat Carmela Conroy — wouldn’t fight to protect undocumented Latine folks in our region, according to Mesa.
“We know at the local level how that could impact families if we’re going to be implementing racist national policies,” Mesa said. “The main concern that people are seeing is, you know: Is my family going to stay together?”
Emilliano’s family is “mixed status” — he and his parents are undocumented, but his sister is a citizen.
For the first 15 years of Emilliano’s life, he didn’t notice many negative impacts from his immigration status. He was able to get a driver’s license and a job and get into community college. Now he can’t do the one thing he desperately wants to do: vote to protect himself and his family.
“It’s only now that I’ve become more of an adult that I’m starting to realize the limitations that I really have,” Emilliano said.
With fears looming about Trump’s potential immigration policies, Emilliano feels backed into a corner where he has to hope that other people vote to protect him and his family. He’s responded by trying to educate his friends and family, and talking about the elections with anyone who will listen.
Still, despite ongoing conversations with his friends, many who come from mixed-status families and have undocumented parents, Emilliano is worried that it hasn’t moved the needle.
“I honestly don’t think my friends are [going to vote],” Emilliano said. “It’s very disappointing to know but it’s also their choice.”
“I don’t want to depend on someone else to do something for me, but voting is something I can’t really do,” Emilliano added. “My friends don’t understand, or other people in general just don’t understand, that what they have is something that’s so valuable, right? The right to vote is so valuable.”
Even more frustrating — his sister just turned 18 and is a U.S. citizen, which means that while Emilliano has to watch from the sidelines, she can vote. But instead “she’s been taking it as a joke,” he said, needling him about how she’s going to vote for Trump, even though it could mean her parents and brother risk deportation.
He recently saw a small win on that front, though: A few weeks after we initially interviewed Emilliano, he let us know that after more conversations, his sister is finally taking the election more seriously and may even vote.
Though his immediate social circle isn’t necessarily feeling the pressure to use their vote to protect Emilliano, other people in his community are.
Jacky Garcia, a part-time psychology and pre-law student at Gonzaga University pulling double duty as a community organizer at Mujeres in Action (MiA), met Emilliano at a local youth listening session on voting, where they connected through their desire to get out the vote in their community. Garcia was moved by his situation and said that through her work at MiA, she sees other people struggling with similar issues.
“It’s a big stereotype that everyone in the Latine community is undocumented, but the reality of it is that a lot of people in the Latine community are undocumented,” Garcia told RANGE. “They are putting into the system, but they’re not getting anything back from the system. And so all of these people are affected directly by these policies, but they’re not getting anything back. They’re not able to voice their concerns because of fear that if they say something, their status is going to be used against them.”
Though a common election conspiracy is that undocumented immigrants will vote as part of a scheme to elect Democrats, available data shows this is extremely rare. Most undocumented people are in the same boat as Emilliano — powerless and unable to protect themselves through a vote.
Top of Form
Accessing information
Garcia is feeling the pressure to do everything she can to combat voter disenfranchisement and encourage the Latine community to come out strong to the polls to make their voices heard and protect those who have been disenfranchised. But for her, that pressure is nothing new: She’s been translating for her Spanish-speaking parents since she was young.
“Growing up, I had to translate everything for them. What did I know about translating medical terms? Nothing. What did I know about legal terms? Nothing,” Garcia said. “But I had to do it anyways.”
Garcia saw firsthand how difficult it could be to navigate government systems for anyone whose first language wasn’t English — and how the people who needed those systems the most were often made voiceless. Those difficulties extend to voting in elections.
In Spokane County, 35,320 people identified themselves as Latine or Hispanic in the 2020 Census. Of those, 12,000 reported Spanish as the primary language spoken at home.
The Spokane-area Latine community is growing — up 66%, from data collected in the 2010 census. But because only 2.7% of Spokane County’s population primarily speaks Spanish — which doesn’t meet the federal threshold of 10,000 or greater than 5% of voting-age citizens with Limited English Proficiency who speak the same language — Washington is not required to translate Spokane’s ballots and Voters’ Guide into Spanish.
In Washington, only about 50% of Hispanic people who were eligible to vote in 2020 actually cast ballots. That year, in Congressional District 5 — which encompasses most of Spokane — Latinos made up 3.1% of all eligible voters, but only cast 1.55% of votes.
Now, Garcia is fighting to close that gap. Garcia wants to elevate her community’s voices and to empower them to vote in the 2024 election. She spends 35 hours each week with MiA, tabling at events to help Latine residents register to vote in the county; and, in the past few months, she’s been going further — translating the Spokane County Voters’ Guide into Spanish to ensure that everyone has the same access to crucial information.
“I am trying to provide materials that are translated from English to Spanish, so that [young voters] can feel like they can go home and they can go to their families and be like, ‘OK. I’m going to vote for my family,’” Garcia told RANGE.
“In our community, our votes are not just for ourselves. They’re for our families and they’re for our communities,” she added. “If we don’t vote, our voice isn’t really heard anywhere. We really do have to make this effort to show up, because if we don’t, it’s going to impact us the most.”
Thanks to Garcia’s work —and that of other staff members at MiA — Spokane County has its first Spanish Voter Pamphlet, available for free here. Voters who are most comfortable reading in Spanish are now armed with tools to be as informed on the issues that are important to them as people who speak English.
“I appreciate that MiA stepped forward to fill a need in the Spokane community,” said Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton. “Voters who are not proficient in English will be more confident in researching the local candidates and issues before casting their ballot.”
Issues of importance
Nationally and statewide, politicos have debated the power and political leanings of the Latine voting bloc — the fastest-growing minority group in the state — and whether it can even be called a bloc at all because of differing beliefs within the community.
There is one defining trait of this group, though — it’s extremely young. This year, nearly 33% of eligible Latine voters are under 30. For context, just 21% of all eligible voters are under 30.
Young Latine people aren’t just voting in numbers that could decide the next president. They’re also doing boots-on-the-ground work to reduce disenfranchisement within their communities.
About nine months ago, 25-year-old Andres Grageda was working in construction and landscaping. He’d stalled for a bit after graduating from college with a business administration degree — doing manual labor by day, playing music by night and trying to figure out what he wanted to do for his “actual career” in any free time he could find.
Grageda had always been interested in politics, closely following federal elections since he was in high school, so when Spokane City Council Member Lili Navarrete contacted him out of the blue, told him he had potential and asked him to work as her legislative assistant, he jumped at the chance. Her timing was “impeccable,” Grageda told RANGE.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life,” Grageda said.
Now he’s found a calling: advocating for his community’s needs and working under Navarrete to “be a voice for the people that don’t have a voice or are unable to be as civically involved as maybe they’d like to be or should be.”
Like Garcia, Grageda is one of the young Latine people in Spokane striving to make the city better, safer and more accessible for his community. Though Grageda used to be hyper-focused on national politics, working as a city council legislative assistant has taught him that, as the adage goes, “All politics is local.”
“One thing I’ve learned is that the local elections and the local politics affect you more than the federal stuff,” Grageda said.
Working with Navarrete, Grageda has heard from a lot of Latine voters about the local issues they want city council to address — primarily housing and economic stability issues. The first bill sponsored by Navarrete, which Grageda worked on, was a bill that would have protected unhoused people from discrimination because of their housing status when applying for jobs or housing.
The bill was deferred indefinitely, but will be discussed again later after an ongoing series of town halls on homelessness issues concludes, a process Grageda says is representative of trying to navigate complex and differing community needs.
Mesa, who has been out in the community with LES working on voter registration efforts and engagement, also pointed to issues of housing access and economic resources as having the biggest importance for local Latine voters.
Inability to access housing assistance makes undocumented immigrants more vulnerable to economic exploitation, Mesa said, and can result in higher rents or multiple families squeezing into spaces that are too small.
The general cost of living in Washington is high, which affects everyone, but is a particularly important issue for the Latine community, Mesa said.
She added that another issue she hears about is the upcoming implementation of Real ID requirements — which could prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses.
Language access is also a huge issue for Latine voters in Spokane this election, and not just when it comes to understanding ballots and voter information.
Garcia told RANGE about a client of MiA’s who is trying to get a protection order against her partner after experiencing domestic violence. That client primarily speaks Spanish — information that had been shared with the court. Yet, Garcia said, MiA has had to go to court with the woman four times because the court continues to fail to provide translation services, as it is required to do.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Last year, RANGE reported on the county’s lack of language access in the court system.
While language access isn’t on the ballot, there are a few local elections that could have a huge impact on countywide policies.
Garcia said that MiA has found support from members of the Spokane City Council on providing translated government materials, but noticed a lack of buy-in from the Board of County Commissioners — which is currently ruled by a conservative majority. This year, Board Chair Al French’s seat is contested; and, if challenger Molly Marshall were to win, it would swing the board’s majority to liberal, perhaps giving language- access advocates more leverage and allies to make countywide changes.
Another issue Garcia frequently hears about while tabling is clean water. Latine and Spanish-speaking people live out on the West Plains in a higher concentration than in the general Spokane/Spokane Valley region. The West Plains neighborhood has been negatively impacted by PFAS contamination, and residents worry about the safety of their drinking water. Language- access concerns impact this, too — information about PFAS testing, town hall discussions about the issue and media coverage about of the contamination and candidates’ plans to address it are distributed only in English.
Feeling the pressure
For Deidra Guzman, a criminology major at Gonzaga University, national issues hitting close to home inspired her to vote for the first time: Her mother and stepdad had to move in with in-laws because they couldn’t afford housing on their own, and her brother’s school was recently shut down because of a shooting threat.
“This year more than ever, it’s more important [to vote] because of what’s going on around the world and here in the U.S.,” Guzman said. “Now more than ever, people aren’t able to afford their own homes, people can’t afford their own groceries, people are scared to go to school, people are scared to be deported back to their different countries and there’s so much anger in the world. There’s so much anxiety.”
Guzman is an Idaho voter, because Caldwell is still her primary residence. She said she often hears rhetoric that — especially because she is a progressive Latine voter in Idaho — her vote doesn’t matter. She hears that sentiment even from her own family, but she’s been fighting to change that perception.
“It’s important to have our voice heard, especially now, during the times people are really struggling,” Guzman said.
Both Guzman and Garcia mentioned that election season was stressful for them, because of their sense of responsibility to their community.
Guzman calls her family frequently to talk to them about the upcoming elections and she’s had a small victory: “My dad is actually voting this year, too, so that’s one family member off the list!”
Even though she devotes a lot of time to fighting voter disenfranchisement at MiA, Garcia said her work doesn’t stop there; she’s been pushing herself to talk politics with people in her social network, and is helping her older brother understand his ballot.
“He doesn’t always understand what these policies mean, but he knows that they’re really important,” Garcia said of her brother. “And so he’ll sit down with me and be like ‘What does this policy mean? How do we make sure that [our vote] aligns with what our family values are and what our community values are?’”
Grageda, too, said that his taste of political involvement has only heightened his sense of responsibility for his community.
“I’m feeling a little bit of pressure to stay in [politics] and in these kinds of circles where I can maybe make a positive change for my community,” Grageda said. “My parents weren’t able to vote in the past. They’re both citizens now, so they can [vote], but it has kind of felt like, ‘Hey, you have this opportunity to have a voice on our behalf.’ It can feel like a lot of pressure, but also I have heard from people that are so disillusioned with the system that they don’t want to participate in it at all and they choose not to vote. It’s kind of sad.”
Even Emilliano, who can’t vote himself, is doing everything he can as Election Day nears to get friends, documented family members and even strangers to consider people like him when they cast their ballots.
“I think that would be the nicest thing that someone could do for me,” Emilliano said. “To be like, ‘Hey, I know you’re struggling in this situation and I want to help you in any way I can to make your life just a little bit easier.’”
RANGE originally published this article on Oct. 22, 2024.
