HOUSTON — On a recent scorcher of a Houston afternoon, Carlos Eduardo Espina was driving to a restaurant that specializes in Nicaraguan and Puerto Rican food when he received a news alert on his iPhone: The former president of Honduras had been sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking.
“Oh, I need to make a video, actually, in the car,” Espina, 25, said apologetically as he pulled his Honda crossover SUV into the restaurant’s parking lot. He skimmed a Honduran newspaper’s Instagram post about the news and then opened TikTok, where he has 9.4 million followers. He turned the camera on himself while his girlfriend, who was sitting behind him, crouched out of the frame, clearly used to this sort of drill.
His hazel eyes widened, and he boomed, “Importante noticia de última hora” — Spanish for “important breaking news” — then shared a one-minute recap. The video racked up more than 100,000 views during lunch, which Espina received for free because the restaurant owner was thrilled to recognize him from TikTok.
Espina, a recent law school graduate who lives in College Station, Texas, has become something of a one-man Telemundo for millions of Latinos in the United States and one of the White House’s favored social media personalities. He posts almost constantly, sharing earnest and personal news about immigration and the Latino community, along with videos about food, sports and politics — and often championing the Biden administration’s agenda.
Despite having more TikTok followers than Beyoncé or Reese Witherspoon, he has received little attention in the national press, perhaps because his videos are mainly in Spanish. But he drew attention last month with videos that he filmed with President Joe Biden as he announced two new immigration measures.
“I’ve basically become, for many people, their main informer on immigration,” said Espina, who’s often found in jeans and a man bun. “People will be watching Telemundo, and if they see something on immigration, they’ll immediately go to my profile and say, ‘Hey, what is Carlos saying about this?’”
Espina is part of a roster of social media personalities whom politicians, especially those in the Biden White House, view as modern-day broadcasters, offering them briefings and unique access to administration officials in hopes of reaching their audiences as more people get their information in places beyond traditional news media.
In August, the White House will host its first conference on the social media creator economy, and the group running the Democratic National Convention will, for the first time, hand out credentials to creators like Espina, giving them access to the party’s marquee event normally reserved for the press.
Espina is quick to emphasize that he doesn’t consider himself a journalist, but his TikTok account isn’t far from journalism, blending aspects of reporting with political commentary and entertainment. It’s a potent combination on an app that has become a meaningful source of news for a growing number of Americans.
It’s a lucrative gig. Last year, Espina said, he brought in $1.3 million, most of it from TikTok, with additional income from other social media platforms and paid sponsorships.
Tom Perez, a senior White House adviser and a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, has become a mentor to Espina, whom he called “gifted.”
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“He has a unique capacity to separate the wheat from the chaff,” Perez said, “and to explain things in ways that are accessible to people.”
Stumbling into virality
Like many of TikTok’s young stars, Espina started posting to the platform while he was stuck at home in 2020.
But unlike so many of his peers, Espina didn’t claim his initial fame with dancing, cooking or comedy. Instead, it was through videos on how to pass the U.S. citizenship test.
Espina, a U.S. citizen, was born in Uruguay, where his father is from. His mother is an immigrant from Mexico. The family settled near College Station, where his father teaches Latin American poetry at Texas A&M.
During his junior year of high school, he started tutoring students who had migrated from Central America. He also began teaching citizenship classes on the weekends with a local nonprofit. By the time he went to Vassar College, he knew he wanted to be an advocate for Latino immigrants.
He graduated early, but the coronavirus pandemic upended the job he had lined up. Instead, he taught virtual citizenship classes on Facebook for the nonprofit he had worked with in high school, and they quickly grew in popularity.
Friends encouraged him to post similar fare on TikTok. His first video surpassed 100,000 views. Soon, he branched out into adjacent topics, like explaining different types of visas.
His account took off in 2020 as he threw his support behind Biden and debated TikTok users who supported Donald Trump, then the president, often posting five to 10 times daily. By the time of Biden’s inauguration, he had more than 1 million followers. He enrolled in law school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2021.
His posts, which can number a dozen in a single day, cover a lot of ground — flagging deadlines for work visas, warning followers about the location of Border Patrol agents or highlighting racist incidents like a video of a woman at Disneyland who said she hated Mexicans. He can be farcical, like the time he pretended to endorse Trump; he also has a penchant for crying on camera, such as when he introduced his mother on TikTok in May.
Espina also regularly posts about money that he gives away to the Latino community. Last year, he said, he donated $50,000 “to give help to my followers or help people in difficult situations.” He said half of his earnings would go toward a community center for Latino immigrants that he planned to build in Houston. All of this content is interspersed with videos capturing his daily life, from visiting local restaurants to cheering at soccer matches in stadiums around the country.
“There’s a lot of Spanish-speaking creators talking about stuff going on in Mexico or South America,” he said. “But there was no one speaking Spanish talking about politics and Latino issues and immigrant issues here in the United States.”
“Two-way street”
In the United States, Hispanic adults are more likely to use TikTok than Black, Asian and white adults are, and more likely to prefer social media for news, according to Pew Research. Latinos are also tuning in less to legacy Spanish-language television networks like Telemundo and Univision, said Melita Garza, an associate professor and expert in Spanish-language news media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“You’re seeing some of the same trends that we see in the English-speaking community, but they’re much more pronounced in the Latino community, especially the immigrant community,” she said.
The Biden administration, hoping to secure the critical Latino vote, has been trying to tap into that trend. Creators have been a pillar of the Biden administration’s communications strategy, joining State of the Union watch parties and spreading the word about vaccines and foreign policy. The approach has recently stumbled as Biden’s policies on the Gaza Strip and immigration face criticism from the left, especially from Generation Z.
The White House’s office of digital strategy has aimed to give creators time with policymakers while leaning on them “to better understand what the American public thinks,” said Christian Tom, its director. “When we have a chance to bring a creator to the White House complex, it is a two-way street.”
Espina had been frustrated by what he viewed as inaction on immigration reform, even spearheading a national protest in 2022. But he connected with the White House this year after signing with Palette, a talent management firm that represents many creators invited to the administration’s events and that the DNC has paid to help with social media influencers.
“I was someone who was very skeptical going into it,” Espina said.
Although the White House was frequently in touch with him, he said it didn’t pressure him to put up sympathetic posts. Espina and his manager at Palette said he had not received compensation from the White House, the Biden campaign or the DNC.
In February, he was invited for private meetings with immigration experts and Perez, the senior White House adviser. He later joined a roundtable with Vice President Kamala Harris before the State of the Union address. He also participated in a gathering of Latino climate leaders in April and a Cinco de Mayo event that included meetings with the first lady, Jill Biden, and the secretary of education.
Espina produced a fount of clips on TikTok last month as Joe Biden announced new protections for immigrants. Espina hyped the news while standing in front of the White House (7.7 million views); the president hugged him after making his formal announcement (11.1 million views); Espina teared up while meeting Biden in the Blue Room as he described what the policies would mean for his friends in the country illegally (14.5 million views); and he taped an explainer that displayed the news releases in Spanish behind him (4.3 million views).
Espina said White House staff members had asked about his plans for his video conversation with Biden and filmed it on a separate device, but that was the extent of their involvement.
“You got to take people where they are,” Perez said, adding, “The days of Walter Cronkite and three television stations where everybody gets their news are long gone.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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