Latin Music Business Suffers as Trump’s Assault on Immigrants Expands

Tour dates canceled, ticket sales down, artists’ visas revoked, and a climate of fear growing around shows that fans have attended for years.

Grupo Firme performs at the 2022 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 15, 2022 in Indio, California. (Composite / Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Coachella)

AS DONALD TRUMP’S MASS DEPORTATION REGIME grinds on, parts of the sprawling Latin music business are feeling the effects. The new reality has resulted in a loss of revenue, canceled visas, and even fears that shows could draw the hostile attention of ICE. All this has fed a growing concern that the industry’s economic future could be at stake.

The troubles affecting the Latin music industry provide a remarkable example of the downstream effects of one of the most divisive policy initiatives of the current administration. And the situation facing the industry today would have seemed unfathomable not so long ago.

Latin music first exploded in the American pop scene in 1999 as stars like Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, and Shakira gained broad audiences and A-list fame. While it went from boom to bust in a few years, it has since seen major renewed growth.

The new wave of artists—from clear leader Bad Bunny, Spotify’s top artist three years in a row, to Karol G, Rauw Alejandro, Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida, and more—is part of the modern mainstreaming of Latin music since 2017. Today, the genre is big business, generating a record-breaking $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024. Adjusting for inflation, this marked an 18 percent increase from the previous peak in 2005, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Last year was the third consecutive year in which Latin music amassed revenues of more than $1 billion.

It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign of success in the music business than nine zeros following a number that follows a dollar sign, and that kind of success would normally create a sense of security for the people doing the work. But under Trump, uncertainty reigns.

Attendees at Napa’s La Onda Festival last month were shocked when the Mexican band Grupo Firme was forced to pull its appearances after the State Department canceled the musicians’ visas; the government claimed that the group’s music promotes violence by drug cartels.

Other Mexican artists also had their visas canceled for similar reasons. In May, Chicago’s Michelada Fest was canceled on account of artists’ uncertainty about obtaining visas. The same month, Julion Alvarez, returning to perform in the United States after eight years, became the first Latin artist to sell out SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles three nights in a row. But although he also sold out tickets to a Dallas concert for 50,000 fans at AT&T Stadium, they never got to see him play: The show was canceled because his visa was revoked. Others who don’t even have concerts booked yet are taking notice.

“Among artists, there’s a lot of fear right now because the perception is that people’s visas are being revoked if they say the wrong thing,” entertainment lawyer Marjorie Garcia, who has worked with Latin artists, told The Bulwark. The issue has become so pressing for traveling acts that Garcia is organizing a webinar with top visa lawyers to discuss best practices and what managers of Latin artists should be advising clients to prevent worst-case scenarios.

“The consistent thread is: Visas are being revoked for a certain style of music—and [the people affected are] Mexican,” she said. “Revoking of visas without notice or not seeing renewals was never a concern before, so it feels like the Wild West right now.”

Garcia warned that the “potential for revenue loss for artists, for promoters, and for the venue could be massive.” The ramifications could spread widely: popular performing artists support an entire economic ecosystem that includes venues, event staff, other vendors involved in every show and tour, and local businesses that sometimes depend on being able to serve the crowds.

The ongoing tumult is not just about visas. There are also growing fears from Latino immigrants and U.S. citizens alike about going to the shows where ICE might show up and decide to make mass arrests, though this has not happened yet at a large scale. Already, there are signs that even major artists in the genre aren’t drawing their usual crowds.

The large ticket companies LiveNation, AEG, and CMN did not respond to requests for comment on ticket sales for Latin music concerts being down during Trump’s term. But dwindling numbers for midsized and smaller shows from California to Arizona and Texas, and across the South in places like Tennessee and Arkansas, attest to a bruised industry struggling to adapt as its customers increasingly stay home.

Euler Torres, a vice president of the Latino civil rights organization LULAC, has lived a life steeped in regional Mexican music since the early 2000s, when he and his brother toured with their band, Los Malandrines. By 2019, he was the co-CEO of Latin Entertainment Network USA, which organized 3,400 events, sold 4.8 million tickets, and took in a gross revenue of $240 million. Latin music was only given serious attention by the larger players in the concert industry once the pandemic was over, Torres said, and the genre has largely operated under the radar despite its nationwide success.

Mexican artist El Fantasma, who Torres said can get as many as 4,000 people to a show “without a struggle,” had only about 800 people show up to a June 20 show in Nashville. The artist later postponed Texas tour dates because of “everything going on” with immigration and the need to stay safe, he told fans on social media. The same went for norteño band Conjunto Primavera. Torres said the group usually sells thousands of tickets for their events, but they only drew around 80 people to Nashville for a recent show.

Then there are unique local events like the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet in Los Angeles County, a flea market that customarily hosts dozens of independent vendors who sell clothing, lots of food, and other goods to a mostly Latino crowd. Housed in an old drive-in movie complex, the venue often has bands like Banda El Recodo, Banda Machos, and Banda Los Recoditos providing a soundtrack to the swap meet.

Last month, dozens of heavily armed, armored, and masked ICE agents raided the festival as a helicopter circled overhead. They made just two arrests.

“But they did the raid, and now artists are not going, and that affects the local economy as well as small business owners who do right by their families, pay taxes, and do their jobs,” Torres told me.

When shows are canceled, the cascading economic consequences land hard across local businesses. Torres said if people reserve accommodations with services like Priceline, their bookings are nonrefundable. Beyond that, though, the money just doesn’t come in, and everyone from restaurant proprietors to ride-hailing and delivery drivers gets screwed.

“The music industry is kind of the mental-health thermometer that keeps people sane, which is why entertainment industries are usually steady during any kind of economic cycle,” Torres said. “But in this political environment, the industry is being affected because now people don’t have those outlets.”¹

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who has floated a bid for the Senate and is the congressional lawmaker most closely associated with the Latino entertainment industry, told me Trump’s immigration crackdown has chilled Hispanic participation in all kinds of public events because “ICE is harassing too many Latinos just because of the color of their skin.” He noted that this applies to immigrants as well as U.S. citizens.

“The way the Trump administration is going about immigration enforcement, with people in black masks who refuse to identify themselves tearing mothers from their kids and scaring people, is having a damaging impact on the Latino community in so many ways, including the economy of neighborhoods, cities, and communities,” he said. “It becomes hard to distinguish ICE at concert venues, and people don’t want to show up because they’re feeling very targeted, and they are being targeted—they’re being racially profiled.”

Abel De Luna, the CEO of Luna Music Corporation, has worked in Mexican and Spanish-language music for 45 years, and his experiences include selling part of his label to Sony Music and then serving as a senior vice president there in charge of the Mexican music department. He said over his decades-long career, he’s never seen a business climate this depressed.

“This is really killing the music industry, especially live performers,” De Luna said. He pointed to the ways that dozens of nightclubs in major cities are suffering because people don’t go out as much. “They’re suffering. If this continues, some of those night clubs will have to close.”

Luna manages groups that have had shows canceled. He said ticket presales are down, and audience attendance is routinely one-third or half of what he would have expected before Trump took office.

“I don’t know when they’re going to stop what they’re doing with immigration, but if they continue this, I think we’re going to go out of business,” he said.

1. Torres himself is the former owner of a Western-wear store, and he explained their unique place in the Mexican concertgoing experience. Construction workers—about one-third of whom are Latino—spend all week doing manual labor in their work gear. But when the end of the week arrives, they like to buy a new shirt, new pants, and new boots from shops like the one Torres used to run and then go out to see their favorite artists perform. People are afraid to go to work because of raids, he told me, so now they’re not going to stores to buy gear and not buying tickets to go to concerts.