What does it look like to spend 25 years covering a story you wish you could stop covering — and still refuse to despair?

Gustavo Arellano is an LA Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the son of two Mexican immigrants. In this conversation he covers the Trump deportation machine, Rancho Libertarianism, why Americans hate Mexicans but love Mexican food, and what it actually looks like to stay in relationship across political difference.

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Key Takeaways

The Deportation Leviathan: This isn’t about policy logic or net fiscal impact. It’s demonization as strategy, funded for decades, borrowed from California’s Prop 187 playbook.
Agents of Their Own Lives: Undocumented people are not a pitiful mass. They are individuals who make this country better. Framing them as victims does them a disservice.
Rancho Libertarianism: The political identity Gustavo coined for Mexican hill-country values: bootstrap mentality, community pride, distrust of government, refusal to be used by either party. It explains a lot about 2024.
Latinos Are Not a Monolith: Every community on his 3,000-mile pre-election road trip had its own story. None of it reducible to a single bloc.
You Eat Their Food, You Start to See Them: Mexican food as cultural bridge. The problem with Chipotle is that it’s a burrito gentrifier, displacing local traditions it doesn’t care about.
Stay in the Friendships: A Trump-supporting friend promised to take up guns for Gustavo if ICE came for him. Gustavo told him to start carrying his passport, “because you’re darker than me.” The friend responded with a thumbs up. That, Gustavo says, was a victory.
These Are Also the Best of Times: During Operation Wetback in the 1950s, the only people fighting back were communists. Today the resistance is broader than anything this country has seen on this issue.

About Our Guest

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in commentary and part of the team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news. The son of two Mexican immigrants, he has covered immigration, Latino politics, and the American Southwest for 25 years.

Links and Resources

Gustavo Arellano

Newsletter (free, weekly): gustavoarellano.org
LA Times: latimes.com/people/gustavo-arellano

“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” (referenced at 00:26:00)

Woody Guthrie’s song about the 1948 crash that killed 28 Mexican farmworkers. ICE’s January 2025 post calling the victims “illegal Mexican aliens” is what sent Gustavo to write about it.

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam (referenced at 00:57:00)

On declining social capital. Gustavo’s prescription: join things, meet people, touch grass.

Born in East LA (1987, referenced at 00:15:00)

Cheech Marin’s satirical classic. Gustavo’s conversation about it with David Chang is what put it on Corey’s radar.

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