The Border Has Spoken. Now 2028 Must Listen.
On Tuesday night, the border spoke. And it spoke in a voice that every presidential hopeful in America should be listening to right now.
Texas elected Gina Hinojosa governor. A Mexican American woman raised in Brownsville, in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley, will lead the second largest state in the country. She is the first Latina governor in Texas history and the first Democrat to win the office since Ann Richards left in 1995. In Texas. Let that sink in.
I am proud, and I am moved. As a fronterizo who grew up in Nogales, I know what this means for the kid in Brownsville, Laredo or Eagle Pass who has been told, in a hundred quiet ways, that power belongs to someone else. Tuesday told that kid something different.
The numbers tell the story
Two years ago, the experts wrote our obituary. Latino voters along the border were drifting right, they said, and they were not coming back. In 2024, Donald Trump carried all four Rio Grande Valley counties: Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr and Willacy. This week, border voters rewrote that story.
Roughly 1.6 million Latinos voted in Texas this cycle, according to LULAC.
Across Texas's predominantly Latino counties, 72 percent of the vote went to the Democratic ticket.
Cameron County gave Trump about 52 percent in 2024. This year it gave Hinojosa, its hometown daughter, 70 percent.
Maverick County, home to Eagle Pass and ground zero for the state's border enforcement buildup, gave Trump 59 percent in 2024. This year the Republican Senate nominee won just 28 percent there.
Zapata County went from 33 percent for Trump in 2016 to 61 percent in 2024, then swung more than 15 points back toward Democrats.
More than 322,000 ballots were cast in the Valley's four counties, up 38 percent from the 2022 midterm.
James Talarico carried Texas's 16 border counties by nearly 45 points on his way to the U.S. Senate.
Here is the lesson, and both parties need to hear it. We are not a captured vote, and we are not a lost vote. We are the swing vote. We moved in 2024 because too many of our families felt unheard on the cost of living. We moved back in 2026 for the same reason, and because we watched enforcement turn into cruelty in our own neighborhoods. Nobody owns us. Whoever shows up, listens and delivers will earn us. Whoever takes us for granted will lose us.
A blue wall along the border
In January, every state on our southern border will be led by a Democratic governor. Xavier Becerra becomes California's first elected Latino governor. Deb Haaland becomes the first Native American woman ever elected governor of any state. Gina Hinojosa takes the oath in Austin. And Katie Hobbs won a decisive second term here in Arizona.
Nearly 2,000 miles of border, from the Pacific to the mouth of the Rio Grande, now has governors positioned to treat Mexico as a partner and the border as a place where people live, work and build.
Three of those four states will be led by governors of color. Arizona is the one that is not. That will change. Nearly a third of Arizonans are Latino, and our community is ready to lead. I know how hard that road is, because I tried. The next time Arizona chooses a governor, it will be time. Our bench is deep, and it is ready.
What to expect in the next two years
The next two years will test whether this moment becomes a movement. Here is what I expect.
Washington will keep making border policy for us instead of with us. Tariff threats, enforcement surges and trade uncertainty will keep landing hardest on border economies.
The four border governors will become the most important counterweight in the country. If they coordinate on ports of entry, water, trade corridors, workforce and public safety, and bring their Mexican counterparts to the table, they can show the country what a working border looks like. It is time to revive a real Border Governors Conference.
The 2028 candidates will come to the border. Most will come for a photo. We should make them stay for a policy conversation.
Both parties will fight for us. Good. That is exactly where we should want to be.
What we should demand of the 2028 candidates
Every candidate for president, in either party, should answer six questions on the record.
A border that works. Will you fully staff and modernize our ports of entry, where most fentanyl is caught, so that security and commerce move together instead of against each other? Secure and humane are not opposites.
Trade as national security. Mexico is our largest trading partner. Will you protect and deepen USMCA, end tariff whiplash, and build North American supply chains that bring manufacturing back to this continent?
A security partnership built on respect and accountability. Will you work with Mexico, not around it, to dismantle cartel networks, stop the flow of American guns south, and share intelligence like the allies we are? And will you keep confronting corruption? I hear it constantly from Mexicans on both sides of the line: one reason many of them credit President Trump is that his administration has revoked the U.S. visas of dozens of Mexican politicians and officials over alleged cartel ties. I agree with that posture. Cartels cannot operate at this scale without protection from people in power, and that nexus must end. Holding corrupt officials accountable should be a pillar of U.S. policy toward Mexico, no matter who sits in the White House.
Migration that works for families and for the economy. Will you deliver permanent protection for Dreamers, an earned path for families who have built their lives here, and enforcement that targets real threats instead of our neighbors? And will you build legal, work-based migration that lets people move back and forth across the border as our economy changes?
New technologies are reshaping where and how we work, and we do not have the workers to keep up. In Arizona we see it every day: TSMC and the semiconductor supply chain are building an entire industry here, and the Semiconductor Industry Association projects the U.S. chip industry will be short about 67,000 workers by 2030. Construction, tourism and hospitality, agriculture and advanced manufacturing face the same squeeze. USMCA already lets some professionals from Mexico and Canada work here, but only in a narrow list of occupations that leaves out most of these jobs.
First, commit to fixing this federally, with work visas for our USMCA partners sized to what our economy actually needs. If Washington will not act, then support letting states set their own workforce visa numbers for workers from Mexico and Canada, and back the federal law that allows it. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Utah Senator John Curtis have already introduced a bipartisan bill to create state-sponsored work visas. States know their labor markets. Let them lead.
Investment where we live. Will you put capital into border infrastructure, binational industrial parks and Latino-owned businesses, so the border becomes the front door of the North American economy rather than its back fence?
A seat at the table. Will you appoint people who actually know the border to the jobs that shape it: at the State Department and our embassy in Mexico City, at Homeland Security and CBP, at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and at Commerce? The border should be managed by people who have lived it, not people who need a map to find it.
Why I am stepping forward
I have spent my life at this intersection. I was elected mayor of Nogales at 21. I led the Arizona Department of Commerce. I served as chief of staff at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, helping run an agency of more than 60,000 people. For the last fifteen years I have built Intermestic Partners to move companies, capital and ideas across the U.S.-Mexico border.
We call these issues intermestic because they are international and domestic at the same time. Trade in Nogales is foreign policy. A wait time at the port in Laredo is a jobs report. A cartel arrest in Sinaloa is public safety in Phoenix. That is the agenda. Over the next two years I intend to help lead the conversation that shapes it, and to hold every 2028 candidate to it.
Gina Hinojosa's victory is the signal. 2028 is the test. Let's make sure the next president understands the border not as a backdrop for a speech, but as the front door to an American century built together with Mexico.
Marco A. López, Jr.
Comments