Last Friday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal government’s policy of keeping thousands of people in detention centers without offering them a chance for bond hearings. This decision goes against years of legal precedent with, according to Politico, 360 judges rejecting the detention strategy in over 3,000 cases.
Carlos Eduardo Espina, a Latino activist and non-profit director, joins Jen to give his take on the court ruling and the impact it will have on detainees. The two also discuss the culture war that emerged around the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime performance, the upcoming Senate primaries in Texas, and how—despite everything—MAGA is not breaking the resilience of the Latino community.
Carlos was named as one of the people shaping American society in 2026 by the Washington Post. Congratulations, Carlos!
Carlos Eduardo Espina is a nonprofit director, activist, and content creator who works to uplift the immigrant community through social media content, community organizing, and charitable causes. Espina leads the nonprofit organization “Migrantes Unidos” and his community center in Houston, Texas. He is the most followed Latino activist in the United States.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We are delighted to have back with us Carlos Eduardo Espina, who is an attorney, an activist for immigrants. and an immigrant, from this hemisphere. So welcome, Carlos, it’s great to see you again.
Carlos Espina
Hey, how are you doing? I’m good.
Jen Rubin
We had not intended to talk about the Super Bowl or Bad Bunny, but we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about this joyful, expression of American multiculturalism, of joy, of love. What did you think about it, watching it? And we were talking beforehand, neither one of us were big you know, Bad Bunny fans before this, but this took on a bigger meaning.
Carlos Espina
Yeah, so it’s really interesting, right, because when they announced Bad Bunny, I was like, oh, that’s pretty cool, you know, because I’m like, obviously, I’m not oblivious to who he is, I’m like, I listen to his music, I like him, but I’m also not, like, a huge fan to the point where I’m like, oh, I’m gonna center, I don’t know, the next few weeks around this, right?
But, as soon as it started, the narrative start to form, and just, like, the hate being thrown at him, it’s almost like, you know, Bad Bunny’s performance, in a way, became a referendum of, you know, immigrants and Latinos in the United States. You had on one end, you know, the extreme MAGA base who’s like, oh, we’re gonna do our own event, and they’ve been saying all these horrible things, and you know, Jake Paul yesterday said he’s a fake American citizen, and Laura Loomer saying he’s an illegal alien farm worker, so it became much bigger than just Bad Bunny.
So I personally, the position I took is, hey, I don’t know, like, I’m not a huge fan, but also, you know, we have to support this guy, because if they’re gonna boycott him and attack him, then we have to be almost a counterweight, a bigger counterweight to this negative movement that’s forming. And it was really interesting how many people who followed me felt the exact same way. They were like, hey, I don’t really like Bad Bunny either, but, you know, we’re gonna listen to him, and then it became a huge thing, and his performance, I think, was very meaningful. I think it was pretty awesome, you know, kind of the messaging around it, and some of the symbolism. So I think it was great overall, and, you know, it just kind of shows that there’s more good people than bad people in this country, if you want to put it that way.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And what I loved about it is it wasn’t angry. It wasn’t, defiant, it was joyful, you know? And it was about unity, and it was about a wedding that was on stage, and, dancing, and it was about neighborhoods. It’s very hard sometimes to remember that the antidote for hate is love, but that was a good reminder in some sense, wasn’t it?
Carlos Espina
Yeah, I think it’s almost showing right now, and it’s interesting, right, because he’s from Puerto Rico, so, you know, technically, a lot of the stuff going on around immigration shouldn’t be affecting him. It does affect him, because, you know, as we’ve talked before on the show, we’re at a point now where if you speak Spanish like he does, or if you look a certain way like each other. than many of us do, then you just become a target for all these negative things. So it’s really powerful, the fact that someone who’s from Puerto Rico, you know, who could very easily ignore a lot of the things that are going on, decided to make it central, you know, during the Grammys and then here in the performance.
Like you said, having a very positive tone, almost showing that resilience of the Latino, you know, immigrant community, that despite everything going on, because much more than, like, the negative policies the Trump administration has been pushing, what they’ve really tried to achieve is essentially to break people, you know, that’s why they push so much self-deportation, it’s like psychological warfare, you know, they want to destroy you, they want to beat you down, so you basically follow their agenda without them even having to try. And I think this was a show of, like, you know, it’s been a year since Trump took office, we’ve seen some very horrible things, but we’re still here, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re gonna continue, you know, prospering and being happy, so I think that was really powerful, and that was the message that I got out of it.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and the NFL is not known for its progressive causes. The fact that they did this, and that, of course, he was so big at the Grammys, reminds us what a huge economic part of our country, the Spanish-speaking population is, and I’m talking to the guy with the biggest audience of them all. Do you think that they get how big a population, what an economic powerhouse, Latinos are in America?
Carlos Espina
Yeah, I think this is a very common thing that I’ve seen, you know, at a smaller scale before. This is, like, a very big example of it, but for example, here in Texas, it’s a conversation I have very often with, you know, business owners particularly, who are Republican, conservative, but they are very pro-immigrant in many ways, and I ask them why, you know, and they’ll say, well, I’m, you know, I’m a Trump supporter, I’m a Republican, but I’m also not stupid, I recognize that Latinos and immigrants play a very big role, so, you know, they might be conservative, Republican, but they’ll do Spanish advertising. They’ll hire Latinos. That’s what I’ve always been saying. It’s not a black or white issue.
You know, I have a very personal example. I have a very good friend of mine, who unfortunately was detained by ICE not too long ago, and he’d been here in the U.S. for over 12 years. I met him when he was in high school. and his boss, who’s actually a Trump supporter for a long time, he called him from the detention center and said, hey, you know, I don’t agree with this, I can’t believe I voted for this, you know, hopefully I can help you in the future, you know, come back with a work visa, because there’s a lot of people that realize, you know, hey, okay, maybe I’m conservative, maybe I have these thoughts, but at the same time, they’re not oblivious to reality.
They walk out, they see that Latinos play a very big role in the economy and culture and society, and so they see these attacks that are going on by the MAGA base, and they’re saying, okay, well, maybe this has gone a little bit too far, you know? I might not, you know, know Spanish, but I’m also not gonna go and call Bad Bunny an illegal alien criminal like Laura Loomer and some of these other people are doing. So I think it’s starting to really backfire on the MAGA movement, and I think the polls show it, and their approvals On the floor, and it’s only getting worse.
Jen Rubin
You know, we’ve seen the events in Minneapolis, play out, and on one level, it disturbs me a lot. It wasn’t until, frankly, two white people were killed that the entire country got into an uproar. We know that many people have been killed, mostly Latino, many of them out of sight because they’ve died in detention camps. And yet you want the entire country to be engaged, however they got there. What do you think, if anything, has changed since the death of these two people?
Carlos Espina
Well, it’s something I think I’ve told you on this show before. I’ve always been a lot more forgiving to non-Latino Trump supporters than to Latino Trump supporters because if you’re a Latino, you know very well what was coming. You know very well what our community… you know, a lot of times, I try to put myself in the position of some of these Trump supporters who are now realizing, you’ll say, why did they take so long to open up their eyes and see how messed up everything is? But a lot of it comes down to, you know, where they grew up, what they’ve been exposed to, you know, they really believed a lot of these narratives.
That’s why I’m also very grateful and very happy when I see people who openly come out and say, hey, you know, I was wrong, or this has gone too far. I think what’s all happened in Minneapolis was really a turning point in the sense that, you know, there’s this perception, right, that the Trump administration’s gonna do whatever they want, and no one can stop them, and there’s, you know— and it is true, they’ve done a lot of bad things, I can’t deny that, but it also showed that they are, at the end of the day, accountable to public opinion, and when things started to shift, they were like, hey, okay, you know we are trying to be authoritarian, but that’s what makes the United States a United States, and an authoritarian regime. You don’t really care about public opinion, right? You just do whatever the hell you want to do, and then you get away with it. But here, they’re realizing, okay, maybe I shouldn’t have this guy, Gregory Bovino running around the streets like a madman, you know, basically laughing after shooting people and all these other things.
So I think that’s the moment that we realize, like, hey, there is a breaking point, and they will respond to public pressure when it’s applied in the correct fashion, and when it’s done, you know, in a way that I think was amazing in Minneapolis, overwhelmingly peaceful. I mean, people were marching in, like, sub-zero weather.I’m from Texas. I’m like, hey, I can’t even, you know, go out when it’s, like, 30 degrees outside. These people are out in 5 degrees! So I think it really was something that was seen in the whole country, and it shows that, you know, hey, there is some hope, and these people are not as unstoppable as maybe we thought they were.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now that Congress is reconsidering the funding bill. I worry that expectations are maybe too high, that, you know, Republicans don’t want to do anything, and Democrats will eventually settle for something. What would you hope, realistically, could come out of this? any kind of reforms? Do you think anything, any improvement, would be positive, even if it’s just a small improvement in certain aspects of how ICE conducts itself?
Carlos Espina
I think we can maybe see some small, you know, on the issue of the masks and the badges and all that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day. I tell people, we’re not gonna get any meaningful reform until we have a change of who’s in power. That’s just the reality of it. I mean, I’ve been saying this since day one, after, as soon as Trump took office. I said, hey, well, the reality is, we can protest, we can march, we can do these things, but nothing’s gonna fundamentally change for the next two years, because they’re in power, and I believe in democracy, and I’m not gonna advocate for any other avenue that’s not, you know, participating and voting democratically.
So I think marches and protests and all these things are good to, you know, kind of wake some people up who are still kind of not aware of what really is going on, but at the end of the day, I don’t think we’re gonna see any meaningful changes until after the midterms. That’s why my big focus is, whatever’s going on in Congress right now, you know, hopefully, I’m hoping for some good changes, whatever, but I’m also not getting my hopes up. I realize that we need to do the work right now to win the midterms, and that’s what my focus is on, and that’s what I think a lot of people have come to terms with. It would be very difficult to see, you know, Republicans wake up one morning and say, hey, I want to actually change things. I’m not too confident in that.
Jen Rubin
Right. You beat them first, and then they change their mind.
Carlos Espina
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jen Rubin
There was a terrible, terrible court ruling last week that basically said that these large—the only way to describe them as concentration camps in Texas— can take anybody who is undocumented, even if they’re not violent, even if they don’t have a criminal record, they’re not at flight risk, and lock them up. And now we have people getting shipped there from all over the country. What’s the reaction in Texas? I’m curious. whether people who are in or near, you know, towns that have them, what the public reaction has been. Has there been opposition? Is there pushback?
Carlos Espina
Yeah, so I think you’re referring to the Fifth Circuit’s And which actually applies to Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And if you see, you know, the case of Julian Ramos is a good example, but many other cases. It’s become very common practice that as soon as immigration detains someone, they try to ship them as fast as they can to either Texas, Mississippi, or Louisiana. Louisiana, we know they’ve sent a lot of people. And the reason why they do this is because the Fifth Circuit has basically stripped any kind of protections for people who are detained there.
You know, for many years, going back to the Biden years, you know, the Obama years, the first Trump administration even, as long as I can remember. there was this common knowledge, right, that, hey, you know, even if you got detained by immigration, if you got detained by ICE, if you don’t have a criminal record, if you’ve been here for a good amount of time, maybe if you have some family members here who are U.S. citizens, it was very likely that you could at least get a bond while you were, you know, waiting for your immigration process.
What the Trump administration did is basically eliminate, say, hey, you know, if you entered here illegally, if you’re here illegally. you can’t, apply for a bond. That went to court, the Fifth Circuit said, hey, you know, sure, Trump is right. And so now what we’re seeing is a lot of desperation, because that hope is like, okay, even people would make plans, even if I got detained, you know, I can fight for a bond, and people are willing to pay, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 for a bond, but that’s been completely stripped, so now it’s going back to what we said earlier.
It’s like psychological warfare. They want you to feel and think, you know, if you get detained, that’s the end of the road for you, which, you know, unfortunately has become the case for many people, or you can be detained for 5, 6, 7 months, but that’s another side of the coin, right? They’ve created conditions in detention centers which are just so unbearable and so difficult that even if you are, you know, maybe having a chance to be released, you don’t want to take that time to, you know, maybe 5-6 months, because it’s just so unbearable. So I think it’s just horrible all around, and going back to what I said, people ask me, what can we do? And I tell them, the only thing we can really do is vote, and, you know, maybe have Congress do a lot more oversight on these detention centers, fundamentally change some of them, close down the ones that need to be closed down, you know, maybe overhaul the system completely, but until that happens, I think we’re gonna continue to see a lot of suffering.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Because the elections are so important, and because we see in every single one of these elections, Hispanic opinion has really shifted away from Trump, you… It’s very understandable why. A lot of people now are looking at these Texas races, the House races, the Senate race. What do you see happening on the ground, particularly in those House races where they re-redistricted to try to get an advantage? Do you see a possibility of winning some, or maybe even all of those?
Carlos Espina
Yeah, well, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, right, but I do remember, I think it was a few days after the redistricting, I actually came on the show, and I said. I’m not too confident that they’re gonna win all of these 5 seats. I was saying that a while back, because I know a lot of it was based on the oversized Latino population, people were very skeptical of my way of seeing things, and now, I think, after this special election, especially that happened in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, people are starting to realize, oh, wow, like, this might not actually be 5 safe seats.
Now, my worry is Texas is… is a state where a lot of people don’t vote, but a lot of times because it’s just so complicated and so confusing, and they’re trying to jam through all these laws and all these things to make it as hard as possible to vote. I mean, I know a lot of the people who show up and say, hey, I’m registered to vote, and then it says, oh, you were purged from the voting rolls a year ago or so, and so I’m worried a lot of that may happen, voter disenfranchisement, but I’m also a big believer that if we push enough, and if we motivate enough people, we can overcome any kind of barrier, because at the end of the day, you know, these barriers make things complicated, but they don’t make them impossible. So I’m very optimistic that, you know, we can… of those 5 seats, at least two of them will go Democrat, maybe three. I think 4 and 5 are very difficult, but I’m not completely lost. I just think we also do need to do a lot of work. And also just reach out to those people who, you know, the key to win here is get people who usually don’t vote.
And I think that’s gonna make the difference. Maybe you can’t really do much to, you know, suppress the turnout of Trump supporters. If they’re gonna vote, they’re gonna vote. If they’re not, they’re not. I think we need to focus on our base and what we can do for them. And I just, hopefully, we have a good slate up and down the ballot that’ll motivate people to vote in November.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and you raise a great point, which is people have to understand where they’re registered, if they’re registered, where their polling place is, and that’s going to take a really big push if the Democrats are going to win some of these House seats. Let’s talk about the Senate race. Very competitive, Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico. I know you have a good relationship with Mr. Talarico. He is very popular in the Hispanic community. Why is he popular in the Hispanic community? What has he done or said that has drawn so many Hispanics to his campaign?
Carlos Espina
Well, I think the Talarico case has been really, you know, impressive, because he’s been able to build up a name recognition, you know, in a very short period of time. I think if you went back even 2-3 months, you asked the average person, who’s James Tallarico? Most people had no idea, right? Because it’s not like you and me that we pay attention to, you know, every level of politics and stuff like that. So I think what’s really broken through, one, is going back to the Bad Bunny thing, which really reminded me a lot of James Tallarico, you know, the, you know, the only thing more powerful than hate is love. I think he’s preached a unity message for a while now, but I also do think is he knows how to explain the issues people care about in a way they understand it. A lot of times for Latinos, that comes along the religious lines of, hey, you know. People are seeing the morality in things. We’re talking about, you know, what Scripture says.
I think those kinds of things are really powerful and really break through to Latinos. And I think, other than that, I mean, he is a very, you know. kind of, I would say, pretty progressive, pretty issues-focused person. If you look beyond, you know, just who he is as a person, if you look at his actual policy, I think he has a lot of policies that focus on education, on working class issues, and I think those are the things Latinos really care about. I think he has a solid message on immigration, so I think that’s all around. Now, what I would say about the Senate primary, which has changed since last time we spoke. I am kind of disappointed how it’s taken a negative turn. Yeah. You know, I was hopeful, and I think we spoke about this as well previously, that I really thought this was just gonna stay very, you know. obviously competitive, because it’s an election, after all, but very peaceful, very friendly, and unfortunately, it’s taken a turn for the worst.
I hope it doesn’t get any worse than that, because I’ve always been a big believer, and my pledge is, hey, you know, I support James Talarico, but if Jasmine Crockett wins, I’m supporting her on day one, because more important than any infighting there might be between Democrats is how are we gonna beat the Republicans in November? And so I’m worried some of these things that are happening are gonna create almost a similar, you know, setting to the 2016 primaries at the national level, where some bases were just so angry with each other that they weren’t able to, you know, unite and, you know, put their differences aside. So I am a bit sad about that, but, you know, at the end of the day, they’re things that are out of my control.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and a couple things I think that you really point out that’s so true. First of all, talking about faith, the interfaith community has been so powerful, the Catholic Church has been so powerful, the Pope has been so powerful in this moment, that I think that really has resonated. And you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate the spiritual message that is coming from the Pope, or if you’re some other religion. There have been other interfaith communities, and that is… so important, so critical. And I would also say, Democrats don’t blow it. It looks like Ken Paxton may win on the Republican side. This is the chance of a lifetime.
Carlos Espina
Yeah.
Jen Rubin
He is so extreme, you might actually get some Republican votes if you have someone like Talarico, who really reaches out, who really resonates with a lot of people who aren’t died-in-the-will progressives.
Carlos Espina
Yeah, I think, you know, at the end of the day, and I think Paxton, you know, I’ve been looking at that primary as well, but going back to what I said earlier, I think if we focus in on our base and who we’re speaking to, I think there’s no obstacle we can’t overcome in these midterms. I think we have every—it’s almost like a perfect storm has been formed for us to take. Now, that’s what I’m saying, I’m just worried that us as Democrats are gonna do what, unfortunately, we’ve done a lot of times in the past, which is we can’t shoot ourselves in the foot.
I mean, you’re giving us a golden opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done, at least in my lifetime, which is for a Democrat to win in Texas. And, you know, if we start with the infighting and the bickering and, you know, this and that and the name-calling, I think it just does a lot of damage. I think right now, we need to be more united than ever, and hopefully, you know, a lot of these things going on can be put behind us once the primaries happen.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and the primaries are what date?
Carlos Espina
March 3rd. Actually, voting starts on Monday, February 17th, I believe.
Jen Rubin
Wow. Wow. Is that amazing? We’re almost there.
Carlos Espina
That’s one of the good things about Texas, which they haven’t taken away yet, right, which is there’s usually about two weeks of early voting, so I’m actually already made plans to vote on the first day of early voting. Also, because I travel a lot, too, you know, I tell people, if you have, like, you know, maybe you work, or maybe you have other things going on in your life, people say, oh, I can wait till election day, but then, you know, you get sick on election day, or something happens, so I always say the earlier you can vote, the better, so you get it out of the way, and then you can go Kind of go on with your life, and, you know, then motivate other people to vote as well.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Carlos, it’s always so uplifting talking to you. You’re a beacon of optimism and joy, which we love around here. You had it, folks. Our contrarians who are in Texas, get yourselves out. Early voting begins soon. So thanks so much, Carlos. We’ll be back and chat with you. Definitely soon, and definitely once we have the results in for the primaries. So take care. Thanks so much.
Carlos Espina
Alright, we’ll speak soon, thank you so much.
