President Donald Trump defended his immigration policies during a visit to Texas on Wednesday as he sought to boost struggling GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton ahead of November’s midterm elections.

“The only thing standing between you and the migrant conquest, the invasion that you had just two years ago — for four years you suffered — the only thing you have to stop that is a guy named Ken Paxton,” Trump said at a rally in San Antonio, a majority Hispanic city.

Trump’s emphatic defense of his immigration policies comes as Republicans are seeking to shore up their standing with Hispanic voters, who helped Trump win the 2024 presidential election but whose support for the president has slid in recent polls. That’s been driven by concerns over the economy and affordability issues, as well as backlash to Trump’s heavy-handed immigration crackdown.

Paxton underscores the challenges facing Republicans in an electoral climate that has the party on the defensive even in longtime GOP strongholds such as Texas.

Trump helped propel Paxton to the nomination earlier this year by endorsing him over Senator John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent and one of the Senate’s most senior Republicans. Paxton defeated Cornyn decisively after a bitter Republican runoff, delivering a major blow to the party’s establishment wing.

Yet Paxton has stumbled throughout the general election campaign, and finds himself less than a month before the election in a close race with James Talarico, who is looking to become the first Democratic U.S. senator elected in Texas since 1988.

Recent polls show Talarico with a narrow advantage, leaving Democrats cautiously hopeful in what has been a reliably red state Trump won three times.

The president spent much of the rally reiterating attacks against Talarico, faulting the ascendant state lawmaker for everything from his policies to his supposed dietary preferences. Trump said a vote for the Democrat “is a vote to turn Texas into a dirty, failing, crime-ridden third-world dumping ground,” and warned voters that the “patriots of the Lone Star State will never forgive you for what you have done” if he wins.

Meanwhile, he reiterated praise for Paxton as “the greatest attorney general in the history of Texas,” praising his loyalty by saying “he was with us all the way.”

Paxton’s race has outsized importance as Republicans fight to retain control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats need to flip four Senate seats to retake the chamber. Highlighting the stakes, Trump’s San Antonio event marked his third visit to Texas in just a month.

Complicating the dynamic for Republican candidates is Trump himself.

Polls show voters disapprove of Trump’s economy, in particular over high costs of living, as well as his handling of the Iran war, which has also brought higher prices at the pump. In Texas — a state Trump won by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024 — he now has a negative approval rating according to recent polling.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is in a reelection race that is tighter than expected, did not attend Wednesday’s rally with Trump, opting instead to attend events he said had been scheduled ahead of time.

Part of the San Antonio metropolitan area lies in Texas’ 35th congressional district. The heavily Latino district is a redrawn seat intended to be favorable to Republicans. The party’s candidate though has only a narrow lead and Democrats are spending to compete, making the contest there a bellwether for the GOP’s staying power with Hispanic voters in the state.

There have been warning signs ahead of the midterms of Trump’s softening support with Hispanics, including in border districts that he surprisingly carried.

Even as Trump seeks to boost Paxton, the dynamic between the two men has been awkward at times. Trump has jokingly needled him as a “pain in the a—” and said voters “might not like the way he dresses” or “the way he talks.” But he’s also argued that Paxton would be a reliably Republican vote in the Senate.

Yet Paxton has reportedly privately suggested some of the president’s decisions are weighing on his own campaign prospects. In audio obtained by the New York Times from a private fundraiser, Paxton said the Republican midterm convention Trump headlined in Dallas last month had hurt GOP candidates.

“When we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” Paxton said, according to the recording. A Paxton adviser dismissed the report to the Times as “manipulated nonsense” and said internal polling showed him ahead.

Asked earlier Wednesday if he regretted his endorsement, Trump said he had “no regrets at all,” saying that Paxton would be a “great senator.”

Trump’s other campaign stops in recent days have been confined to Republican-leaning states, including Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio and Nebraska. Those deeply-conservative locations suggest a strategy that aims to boost turnout among committed supporters rather than try to persuade swing voters.

However, while Trump’s visit to Texas is in keeping with his travel to mostly red states, Wednesday’s trip took him to a Democratic-leaning city.

The president’s speech was interrupted multiple times by protesters, who were then led out of the venue before Trump began to speak again.

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(With assistance from Derek Wallbank.)

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