Abril Valenzuela is the baby of her family. She’s an only child, the youngest of a bunch of cousins who live in Phoenix, and growing up, the only one who was born here.
Her parents and other family members have been in Arizona for years, but they’re undocumented. She says she felt that impact early on.
“I remember some of my older cousins when they were in high school, talk a lot about frustrations that they couldn’t get a job to work during high school, and they couldn’t get a drivers license,” she said. “So, to me, as a little kid, that was confusing.”
Valenzuela went through another right of passage alone in 2020 — when she was able to cast her first ballot. She registered as soon as she turned 18 that year and she remembers feeling a lot of pressure.
“Because in 2016, I was in eighth grade and that was like one of the biggest elections that I really could remember. And in 2020 I feared what middle school Abril felt,” she said.
She says she felt idle during former President Donald Trump’s first term, watching as things like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program some of her family members relied upon came to a screeching halt in court, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment rustled up fear in her community. Voting in 2020 felt like an honor.
“And I remember filling out my ballot at the kitchen table with my family there, and thinking what a huge privilege it is to be able to vote for all of us,” she said.
Valenzuela’s not alone. The immigrant advocacy group FWD.US estimates there are some 140,000 U.S. adult citizens in Arizona who live with at least one undocumented person.
A 2020 Pew Research Center survey estimates Generation Z — the youngest eligible voting generation and the one Valenzuela’s part of — is the most diverse bloc yet.
As many as 40% identify as Hispanic in Western states like Arizona. And while there are fewer Gen Z immigrants than in the preceding millennial generation, they’re more likely to be the children of immigrants — Pew’s 2020 survey estimates roughly 22% of the generation has at least one immigrant parent.
“It’s the first generation which is majority minority, not a majority white. It is very diverse in its religious background, the fewest Christians, and the greatest number of people with no religious affiliation,” said political analyst and generational change researcher Mike Hais.
Hais says millennials and Gen Z Americans make up about 48% of eligible voters this year. And that number’s growing.
“By 2028 they will be [the] majority and by 2036, perhaps as much as 60% or more of the electorate will be those two generations,” he said.
These are powerful voting blocs that Hais says both Democrats and Republicans are trying to court in different ways right now. But he says important divisions still exist when it comes to hardline policies being floated now — like the mass deportation proposals from the Trump campaign.
“Younger Republicans, some of whom may come from families with undocumented immigrants, are pretty much evenly divided on the issue, they’re not quite as ready to send people back,” he said. “And even of those, about half want some path to citizenship.”
Those divisions bear out on the ground in Arizona with people like David Rojo .
He’s a 20-year-old, first-generation American from Tucson who works in construction and does day trading in his free time.
Both his parents are from Mexico, and he says they’re U.S. citizens now. This is the first election he’s voting in. Like Valenzula, Rojo says Trump getting elected in 2016 is a core memory.
"I think I was about 12 years old if I’m not mistaken," he said. "We found out Trump got elected, and a lot of the students cried because I grew up in a majority Hispanic and non-white school. Because we all thought, oh yeah, 'we’re all going to get deported.'"
But this year, Rojo says he's voting for Trump.
He says he believes a second Trump presidency is more likely than a Harris one to yield a prosperous economy and end U.S. involvement in foreign wars.
And he says he’d support the mass deportations Trump has proposed, even though some of his family and friends are undocumented.
“I don’t have a problem with immigration at all, as a product of immigrant parents, but I think they should come in checked, and have a background check to know who’s coming in and to know if they’ll be contributing to the well-being of the country,” he said.
On a recent afternoon in west Phoenix, Valenzuela and her canvassing partners set off from her parents’ home to walk door to door with a list of Republican and Democratic voters considered to be less engaged.
They were there volunteering with the immigrant advocacy group Aliento, asking people to vote "no" on Proposition 314 — a ballot initiative in Arizona this year that would give local police the authority to carry out immigration-related arrests.
“It’s always shocking to people to see youth … taking point and being the people at the door ... it’s refreshing to see people who care about it so young,” she said.
Valenzuela’s been doing this kind of work since 2020. She says it feels similar now.
“You would turn on the news or go on social media and the anti-immigrant rhetoric was just rampant I'd say, and I think a lot of that is similar this year. So not just Prop. 314 but it’s reminding people about the humanity of my family and my friends’ families,” she said.
She says she knows that might take longer than just this election.
