While President Obama announced a delay in taking executive action on immigration reform until after the 2014 elections, conservatives are pushing to expand their footprint in the Latino community. As Ed Morales wrote in this month’s The Progressive magazine, the Libre Initiative — which promotes itself as a nonprofit that provides social services and talks about helping Latinos achieve the American Dream, ensuring economic  freedoms, and promoting a “market-based” solution to immigration reform — is making it its mission to build ties between the conservative movement and the Latino community.

“On its website, the Libre Initiative tries to soften its image with a series of gauzy and polished short videos called “Share the Dream.” They feature a New Mexico preacher named Pastor Mike Naranjo, who overcame alcoholism with self-reliance and religion. They also feature Libre’s national spokesperson Rachel Campos-Duffy and [Daniel] Garza himself.

“With string music playing behind her and a picture of the sun shining on the Washington Monument, Campos-Duffy tells her family’s personal story. Then she adds: “I’m worried that government programs that are supposed to help Hispanics are actually doing harm. . . . A sense of entitlement and dependency on government is starting to take over.” (Campos-Duffy is married to GOP Representative Sean Duffy of Wisconsin.)

“Garza’s three-and-a-half-minute video tells of how he and his family worked in the fields. “My father never took welfare,” he says, but got ahead because of self-reliance. Garza warns that folks are “caught in dependency that government offers,” which, he says, has “condemned their children to a life of mediocrity and subsistence. This is not the American dream. This is an American nightmare.” Garza says: “Advancing economic freedom is the best way to improve human well-being, especially for those at the bottom.” Taking an evangelical tone, he concludes: “The Libre Initiative is reaching the Hispanic community before they are lost forever.””

But as Morales also points out, Libre is funded by the Koch brothers, who actively work to prevent the advancement of causes that would greatly help Latinos by fighting against them, like voting rights protections, raising the minimum wage, and expanding access to healthcare.

“And when you look at Libre’s funding, you see the tentacles of the Koch brothers, who have spent millions of dollars funding rightwing groups through intermediaries like Freedom Partners and an outfit called the “TC4 Trust.” Libre is one of the recipients.

“Libre received $3.8 million from TC4 and Freedom Partners” in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Yahoo News reported that Libre’s Arlington, Virginia, headquarters “also shares a floor in the same office building as Freedom Partners.””

“Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics says this type of funding arrangement is typical of the Koch brothers. “The Koch network is unique because of the concentration of money and the lengths that they go to make the flows of money as complex as possible,” he says.

“Two of the main issues on Libre’s agenda are denouncing the Affordable Care Act and opposing increases to the minimum wage. Ironically, Latinos stand to benefit more from expanding access to health care and raising the minimum wage than many other groups.”

Despite the challenges, Libre’s access to the bottomless bank accounts of the Koch brothers means it’s a player progressives should take seriously — and a reminder that the votes of Latino citizens are not to be taken for granted.