As voters head to the polls on Tuesday for the midterm elections, Latino evangelicals are emerging as one of the most closely watched groups in the country — a community that, according to Christianity Today, feels caught between its convictions and its concerns.

Retired pastor William Rodriguez, a superintendent with the Assemblies of God who oversees nearly 340 congregations, most of them Spanish-speaking and based in Southern California, told Christianity Today that most of the predominantly Hispanic churches in his district have seen someone from their congregation detained or deported during the current administration's immigration enforcement efforts.

Rodriguez said that in his own Los Angeles church, immigration officials recently deported an undocumented Mexican woman who had lived in the United States for three decades and has three American-citizen children, after detaining her during a scheduled immigration appointment. He also said two evangelical pastors in his district without any criminal histories were deported to Guatemala and Honduras in recent months, and that their congregations are now led by one pastor's wife and the other's adult son.

Many Los Angeles churches have seen attendance fall as fear has spread during enforcement raids, Christianity Today reported, and at least one Assemblies of God congregation moved its public lake baptisms to private house pools to ease anxiety among worshippers.

Yet how Latino evangelicals will vote remains uncertain. In 2024, nearly two-thirds of Hispanic Protestants — most of whom are evangelicals — backed Donald Trump's return to the White House, according to Public Religion Research Institute figures cited in the report. Trump lost the overall Hispanic vote, but by a small enough margin to show that Republicans had made significant inroads with the voting bloc, driven in part by economic dissatisfaction and alignment on abortion, LGBTQ matters, and parental rights.

The landscape has since shifted. Pocketbook concerns such as high gas prices, along with health care, education, and democracy, now rank high among Hispanic voters' concerns, and polls show Democrats have regained some of the ground they lost. Trump's favorability among Hispanic Protestants has dropped by 20 percent in two years, according to an August-September survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, though the same survey showed Republicans still holding a diminished edge — 44 percent of Hispanic Protestants said they would back a Republican in the midterms and 35 percent a Democrat, with about a fifth undecided.

“Latino evangelicals, contrary to popular perception, are definitely a swing vote group,” Gaston Espinosa, a professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College who studies Latino religion and politics, told Christianity Today. He said many feel caught in between: they care about their communities and generally do not support the excesses that have accompanied the immigration crackdown, but many do not want to vote for Democrats because of the party's social platform, especially on abortion and LGBTQ issues.

That tension was echoed in Minnesota, where Héctor Andrade, pastor of Comunidad Cristiana Twin Cities, said he used to consider himself a Republican but does not anymore, after churches under his watch saw congregants deported, others leave the country out of fear, and one undocumented member held in immigration custody for five months. Andrade said a 70-year-old American citizen in his congregation was taken into custody and later released, which he suspects was a case of racial profiling. Still, Andrade said he is not moving to the left: he remains socially conservative, and family issues remain important to him. “It is very confusing,” he said, “because you don't know where to go.”

Both sides are courting the vote. The Hispanic arm of the Faith & Freedom Coalition has partnered with some Hispanic churches to distribute materials about where candidates stand on issues such as abortion and school choice, focusing on competitive states including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Meanwhile, the National Latino Evangelical Coalition released a voting guide in September called “With Love: A Christian Guide to Faithful Voting,” urging congregants to look beyond party labels and ask whether a candidate demonstrates love of neighbor, shows trustworthy character, and will use power responsibly.

For believers, the election is a reminder that no party platform can carry the full weight of the Christian conscience — and that the Church's witness is measured not by which side wins, but by how faithfully it loves its neighbors, prays for its leaders, and keeps its hope anchored beyond any ballot.