A Texas man who voted for President Donald Trump at the polls last year now says he feels like he’s been duped, one of a growing number of minority voters who is speaking out to express anger and disappointment.
Arturo Dominguez, a 59-year-old from Laredo, Texas, told The Washington Post that Trump’s second term has so far left him regretful. He said he wasn’t completely sold on Trump even when he voted for him but had hoped Trump would come back to the White House with more experience after the “learning curve” of his first term.
Instead, he said, he has now realized Trump came back “reloaded with vengeance” and lacking any real plan, unleashing a “chaotic” trade policy that’s forcing consumers to suffer.
Dominguez lamented that Trump appears more focused on targeting “everyone he thinks wronged him” than anything else, adding: “You don’t do that. That’s what a little boy, an immature person, does.”
Trump’s support among Latino voters has been waning since he returned to the White House in January, polls show. He won an estimated 48 percent of the Latino vote in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center, after losing that voting bloc decisively in 2016 and 2020.
“Estoy muy decepcionado (I’m really disappointed),” Dominguez said, noting he took a chance on Trump despite reservations, after backing Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in previous elections.
Dominguez said he was especially outraged by the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, accusing federal officials of detaining people who “look Mexican or look like they’re from another country.”
“They don’t even know if they’re American or not. It was supposed to be that they were only going after criminals. … Why are they grabbing more people off the street?” he said. “And why are they covering their faces? It isn’t right. We’ve never seen that before.”
Dominguez’s disillusionment mirrors a wider slide in Trump’s standing among minority voters, according to polling data compiled by the Post. The publication reported that Trump’s approval rating among Black Americans plunged from 24 percent during his first three months in office to 13 percent this fall, based on an average of eight national polls.
Support among Hispanic voters also declined, dropping from 40 percent to 34 percent in the same period. Pew Research Center surveys showed approval among Asian registered voters dropped from 44 percent in February to 30 percent in September.
A Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll conducted this fall found that 19 percent of non-white voters who backed Trump said they regretted their decision, compared to 5 percent of white voters.
Asked whether he regretted his vote, Dominguez nodded and said: “Mm-hmm. And I don’t think I’m the only one.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
