This is part 2 of Gabriel Buelna and Enrique M. Buelna's essay on the shortfalls of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Here's part 1.
The rules of the American political game have shifted profoundly, and national Latino organizations are struggling to keep pace.
This lag is dangerous. We are in the midst of a political crisis unlike any other in our history, and Latinos are at its center – cast as the enemy and attacked on all fronts. Meeting this moment requires more than recycled strategies from the past; it demands bold, reimagined approaches equal to the scale of the threat.
In these times, organizations like the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (“NALEO”) risk becoming irrelevant – or worse, negligent – in protecting and advancing the lives of Latinos in this country. We stand at a critical juncture, and rebuilding our organizing efforts is essential to meeting the escalating threat from the White House and other right-wing sectors wishing to harm our communities.
NALEO was founded in the 1970s to confront the dire need of representation and political power among the different Latino communities. In this sense, the organization was thrust into the trauma and urgency of Chicano and Puerto Rican activism and struggle coming out of the Civil Rights Movement.
But the architects of NALEO, and other such organizations, understood that the trauma went even further back – decades back. Many in our communities still lived with the terrible memories of the mass deportations of the 1930s and 1950s, segregation in housing, education, employment, and public facilities in general, as well as poll taxes, gerrymandering, and a myriad of other voting restrictions. So they needed to act strategically if they were to build capacity and project political power.
But history hasn’t been kind to Latinos. One look at the current attacks on our communities raises the question: what has really changed? The vindictiveness is raw, the blame callous, the hate visceral. Layered on top is the corruption and incompetence with which the administration is deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – a dystopian nightmare come to life.
Masked ICE agents have no place in a democracy. Instead, we are seeing violent vigilantes masquerading as legitimate officers, kidnapping and assaulting women, with little effort to stop these heinous crimes.
Many warned this would happen, but those warnings continue to fall on deaf ears. Backed by roughly $45 billion in funding, ICE is positioned to carry out a prolonged assault on our communities – with no end in sight.
So far, the response from large and influential Latino organizations to protect our communities – immigrant or not – has been weak and ineffective. The fact that ICE can run roughshod over Latino neighborhoods across the nation with little discernible resistance is alarming.
How can they racially profile Brown communities, endanger lives in their raids, separate families, and force people into life-threatening detention – both here and abroad – without triggering a massive public outcry? And how is it that no bona fide judges can stop them? How is this happening in 2025 and in the land of freedom?
No doubt about it, we are in a national crisis, and it’s not just from the deterioration of our political institutions, beginning at the federal level, but from our own Latino leadership.
This is why NALEO matters – because when national organizations fail to act or act in a manner that is weak and ineffective, it leads to fragmented local responses, duplication of effort, and unnecessary suffering. The capacity exists to intervene, mobilize, and lead. But if those with the largest platforms remain silent and/or, or at least appear to be so, the burden shifts to local families and overextended grassroots groups to resist alone.
The July 2025 NALEO conference in Atlanta should have been a rallying point. But it wasn’t. It seems the Biden years lulled NALEO and similar organizations into a false sense of security. The first Trump administration should have been the wake-up call – but it was not. Now, in his second administration, xenophobia has returned with vengeance as a formal policy. And once again, Brown/Latino communities have been caught flat-footed.
For decades, we have been told Latinos are the “Sleeping Giant” – that if we just vote more, elect more Latinos, and build more pipelines, equity will follow. But voting is not a strategy; it’s a tool. And too many of our so-called leaders either don’t know how – or don’t want – to use it. Yes, we have thousands of Brown and Latino elected officials today. But what does it matter if they lack the desire, the passion, or the courage to speak out?
Atlanta revealed this deep disconnect: panels more focused on branding than border enforcement, donor appeasement over emergency planning. No sessions on rapid response. No strategies for resisting ICE. No urgency. Just sanitized language and polite smiles in the face of a political regime actively targeting our people.
Even the panel on “Federal Policies & The Latino Community” failed to articulate any semblance of a message, with speakers urging attendees to do their own research. Imagine that.
Another example, one panel was titled “Professional Development for Latinos in the Corporate & Public Sector.” Once again, nothing addressed how to support communities currently under siege. Where were the discussions on helping small cities and school districts craft policies to shield residents from ICE enforcement?
The session description opened with this line: “Latino professional and Greek organizations have long held a role in cultivating talent for the corporate and public sectors.” A fine sentiment – but one far removed from the urgent realities many Latino communities are facing right now.
It is not as though NALEO does not know how to offer concrete, actionable guidance. One of the strongest sessions of the entire conference was the “Governance Track: Land Use 101,” led by Alfred Fraijo Jr., partner and founder of Somos Law Group. His presentation delivered clear, practical strategies for improving housing policy and strengthening neighborhoods – an example of how targeted expertise can directly empower local leaders to address pressing community needs.
So why, in a moment of national crisis, is NALEO responding with such caution, such ambivalence? Again, the reality of the crisis we’re in right now is not registering. But the deeper issue may lie in the DNA of the organization itself.
From its inception, a segment of Latino political elites envisioned NALEO as a kind of “Brown Boys Club” – a bipartisan space modeled after the U.S. Senate, where civility and decorum were prioritized over urgency and action.
For years, critics have pointed out that NALEO has lacked ideological clarity precisely because it has tried to be everything to everyone. A sort of internal colonial model meant to supposedly represent communities, but the reality is that NALEO seems to be taming communities.
Under its umbrella are vastly different Latino communities, some with radically divergent goals. In trying to serve them all, especially the more conservative factions, NALEO has too often opted for neutrality over advocacy, consensus over courage. The result is an organization paralyzed by its own politeness, unable—or unwilling—to lead in a time that demands boldness.
The bottom line is this: In a political landscape where Trump and the MAGA movement hold power, a bipartisan NALEO stripped of ideological conviction does not serve as a safeguard – it becomes a casualty. And the only winner is Trump and MAGA.
Nowhere was this disconnect more glaring than in the remarks of Mayor Claudia M. Frometa, NALEO Board President and a Downey Republican.
Downey has seen its share of ICE activity, yet Frometa offered no vision, no resistance, and no urgency in her remarks. Her remarks were not just underwhelming – they embodied the broader failure of the organization to understand the national moment. While there were no MAGA hats in the room, and Trump’s name was not on the agenda, his presence was felt through NALEO’s passive, polite neutrality. The tragedy is that Frometa is a Mexican immigrant herself, whose constituents in Downey have criticised her for not making public comments.
In her NALEO statement, Fromenta states, “My vision for NALEO this year is to forge a path of COMPROMISE and collaboration amongst our members. History has demonstrated that America is stronger when opposing political voices come together, agreeing to disagree without being disagreeable with each other.”
That muddled voice, with its focus on compromise, has meant that our communities have had to face ICE largely on their own. This hands-off approach appears to be the present policy of NALEO and its leadership.
The tragedy is that many speakers invoked NALEO’s “nonpartisan” identity as if it were a virtue. But the issues at stake – racial profiling, detention camps, attacks on naturalization standards, mid-decade census designed to manipulate representation, dismantling federal agencies, corruption – these aren’t Republican or Democratic issues. Some issues ought to be important to every American, but Latinos specifically.
In contrast, California Senator Alex Padilla’s brief video statement after NALEO’s conferred pierced the fog of evasion: “I refuse to be silent NALEO, and I refuse to let Latinos be used as pawns in Trump’s political games.”
In just a few words, Padilla named the threat and called for action. Even Padilla felt that he had to call out NALEO by name to shake the organization out of complacency.
This is not what NALEO was meant to be. It was once a bold cross-cultural experiment, uniting Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central Americans under one political roof. It was supposed to challenge the dominant narrative, not conform to it.
Today, it acts more like a corporate trade association: bipartisan to a fault, stripped of urgency, allergic to controversy. And in doing so, it risks irrelevance to the grassroots movements doing the work it was built to lead.
It is time for NALEO to break the mold–open its doors to grassroots organizations, immigrant rights advocates, legal defenders, and the families most directly affected. Make future events bold. Make them free. Make them honest. Let these spaces be for building real strategy, not just securing sponsorships.
Yes, some sponsors will squirm. Let them. If they are not ready to confront the realities of race, class, and other systemic inequalities, they do not belong at a Latino political conference.
Ask yourself this: If MAGA or Trump were in your position, would they hesitate?
Some within NALEO will dismiss this as a critique from the outside. But they know–and we know—that many left Atlanta disappointed. Those who walked away disillusioned also walked away with a renewed sense of purpose.
There is another path. Not driven by caution, but by courage. Not by titles, but by truth. And not by status, but by solidarity with the people who trusted us to speak for them in the first place.
The NALEO 2026 conference will take place in Los Angeles. Given the underwhelming showing in 2025 and the monumental stakes of the November 2026 election, the moment demands urgency.
Thousands of elected and community leaders must insist that the very institutions created to drive change stop hiding behind muddled messaging. Do not accept the false comfort of “bipartisanship” or the convenient shield of nonprofit status as excuses for inaction.
Ask yourself this: If MAGA or Trump were in your position, would they hesitate?
But the real question is: Where is NALEO’s executive board? Why did they allow this? Such a muddled voice suggests one of two things—either the board and its executive leadership are simply clueless, or political forces within NALEO are pressuring them into a neutral, watered-down approach. If it is the latter, then we, as community leaders, must demand a public meeting to hold them accountable.
