Trump Voter Who 'Expected Deportations' Says 'I'll Never Vote for That Man Again' After Brother Is Detained

A South Texas coffee shop owner who backed Donald Trump in 2024 says she will never support him again after immigration agents detained her brother and other local residents she describes as hardworking.

Jessica Vuittonet told CBS News she knew Trump planned to deport people but never expected agents to target 'innocent people.' Her account comes as Republicans in the Rio Grande Valley warn the crackdown is eroding the Latino support that powered the party's gains two years ago.

A recent CBS News poll found that nearly 60 per cent of Latinos believe the administration has deported more people than they expected.

'I Never Thought It Would Hit My Own Family'

Vuittonet runs a coffee shop in San Benito, roughly a 45-minute drive from McAllen. She told CBS News immigration correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez that she voted for Trump in the 2024 election, mainly for religious reasons, according to the network's report published on Friday 23 October 2026.

San Benito sits in Cameron County, at the southern tip of Texas. Vuittonet now regrets her vote. She cited the number of local residents detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and said she believed the agency was targeting the wrong people.

'I know he was going to start deporting people but not innocent people, not hardworking people,' she said.

CBS News shared a clip of the interview on X later on Friday, writing that Vuittonet expected ICE to go after criminals. The post had drawn more than 200,000 views at the time of writing, with many replies from Trump supporters dismissing the story.

Brother Detained After Routine Check-In

Vuittonet has spoken publicly about her family's experience before. In September, she told The New York Times, in a report republished by the Kingsport Times News, that 2024 was the first time she had ever voted, and that she cast her ballot for Trump.

Her brother was taken to an immigration detention centre earlier this year, shortly after a scheduled check-in with an immigration official, according to the Times, and was later deported. Vuittonet told the paper his detention 'felt like a punch to the gut.'

'I started holding resentment and grudges, especially from those people that I rallied with for Trump,' she told the paper.

She said the harm reached beyond her brother to her parents and to his children, and described how her world 'truly does go upside down.' Her account was one of many in the Times report from voters who had backed Trump in 2024 and now felt let down by his immigration policy.

Neither CBS News nor the Times named her brother or gave details of the case against him.

Border Crackdown Reshapes Daily Life

Vuittonet is not the only South Texas Trump voter now voicing doubts. Benny Melendez, who owns a small construction company near the border, told CBS News he had installed fencing at job sites to keep ICE from taking his workers and to require agents to have judicial warrants to enter.

Melendez said that building a home now takes his team about a year, compared with roughly four months before the crackdown. He backed Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. 'I regret my vote for Biden. Now I regret my vote for Trump,' he said. 'What other options do we got?'

Javier Villalobos, the Republican mayor of McAllen, told the network that the ICE crackdown was his constituents' top issue. 'It is not a good picture,' he said, adding that many residents saw the deportation campaign as 'a crackdown on the Hispanic community.'

Villalobos warned that his party risked losing some of the gains it had made with Latino voters in border communities. In 2024, Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley gave Republicans majority support for the first time in modern history, according to the Times. Texas Republicans redrew several US House districts in 2025 on the assumption that the shift would last.

Several South Texas races are on the ballot next month. In Texas' 15th congressional district, Democrat Bobby Pulido is challenging Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz. Statewide, Democrat James Talarico faces Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for the open US Senate seat.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, told CBS News earlier this month that he 'particularly' did not care about the midterms. He said his job was to 'keep that border secure and enforce immigration law.'

CBS News said it had contacted the White House for comment on its report. Administration officials have routinely defended ICE operations, pointing out that Trump campaigned on expanding deportations.

The Times said its reporting drew on more than two dozen interviews across the Rio Grande Valley. Voters it interviewed described a weaker local economy, slower construction as workers were deported, and small businesses losing customers who stayed home to avoid immigration stops.

Lupita Garza, 48, a McAllen resident who also voted for Trump in 2024, told the paper that the economy had weakened. Like Vuittonet, she had backed Trump at the ballot box two years earlier.

Americans vote in the midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November.