The start of Hispanic Heritage Month feels different this year because millions of U.S. Latinos don’t feel American anymore. On Sept. 8, exactly one week before Hispanic Heritage Month begins, the Supreme Court ruled that federal immigration agents in Los Angeles had the court’s blessing to profile people based on how they look, the language they speak or the jobs they hold. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the country’s first and only Latina justice, put it plainly: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR
Across the country, Hispanic Heritage Month is at risk of being stripped of all its joy and injected with fear. In Illinois and Massachusetts, parades and festivals have been canceled, with organizers citing the reasonable fear that ICE agents will target such gatherings for deportation arrests. In the Pacific Northwest, long-standing community celebrations were shut down or moved online. One organizer said: “We are not in a time of celebration. We can’t celebrate when we know that our kids are being left without parents, that we are living in absolute fear every single day, and we continue to be targeted.”
And in Chicago, where this week’s Mexican Independence Day usually brings hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, events were scaled back or postponed. Trump’s “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” meme definitely ramped up the fear, and even though it appears plans to send in the National Guard have been delayed, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is still using aggressive tactics that have struck more fear within Latino communities, even leading to the Friday shooting death of Silverio Villegas-González.
“The fact that the federal government is sending troops as we start these celebrations is an insult,” Illinois state Sen. Karina Villa, a Democrat, said this month when it appeared the National Guard would be deployed soon. “It is a fear tactic. It’s unforgivable.”
This is all coming at a time when the future of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Latino is also in jeopardy of ever becoming a reality, with Spectrum News reporting in late August that President Donald Trump has “provided no money for the project in his proposed federal budget.”
I’ll admit here that I have always been ambivalent about Hispanic Heritage Month. The running joke is that it’s the only time each year that Latinidad matters to others. An observance that celebrates Latino history and accomplishments for only 30 days never appealed to me, because it minimized the daily impact of U.S. Latinos — now nearly 20% of the country’s population — on American life. However, this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month hits differently; it is a resistance to erasure. For those who feel safe to express such resistance this month, I suggest we go out there, speak Spanish (or Portuguese), and wave the flags of Latin American countries. Those actions are rooted in American history, and it is our right to express them. And it would send a message that Latinos in this country are significant contributors to this country.
In the same way that the Trump administration’s arrest of hundreds of South Korean nationals puts at risk South Korea’s pledge to invest $350 billion in the U.S. economy, the unrelenting hostility toward Latino communities is financially foolish. The U.S. Latino GDP reached $4.1 trillion in 2023, making it the fifth-largest economy in the world if measured as a country, surpassing the United Kingdom, France and India.
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. labor force growth since 2010 has come from Latinos, and real wages in our community have risen nearly three times faster than for non-Latinos. Consumption alone reached $2.7 trillion, larger than the entire economy of Texas. But now, after years of driving growth, Latino households are pulling back on spending, citing the current political climate of fear. If the growing feeling among Latinos that we don’t belong here continues to be expressed by our not spending as much, then the American economy is likely to get even worse. Our cultural presence is just as real as our economic power, but the MAGA movement, with its lie about a great replacement theory, seems determined to erase it. That’s why this moment feels so dangerous. The Supreme Court’s ruling that we can be profiled on top of all that is infuriating. Nonetheless, fear has never been the whole story. Latinos have built networks of survival and joy that will outlast this administration. We have fought for unions, organized for voting rights, created art and music that cross borders. We have raised generations who are rightfully proud of being Latino in the United States. The danger of this moment is real, but so is the opportunity. Hispanic Heritage Month arrives as a reminder that Latinos are not waiting for validation. We are asserting presence on our own terms. While the Trump administration may try to drive us into the shadows, like Justice Sotomayor, we dissent. The start of Hispanic Heritage Month feels different this year because millions of U.S. Latinos don’t feel American anymore. On Sept. 8, exactly one week before Hispanic Heritage Month begins, the Supreme Court ruled that federal immigration agents in Los Angeles had the court’s blessing to profile people based on how they look, the language they speak or the jobs they hold. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the country’s first and only Latina justice, put it plainly: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. 
