Past research connects pervasive anti-Latina/o stereotypes to school practices and teacher-student interactions. However, there is less work on how Latina/o students negotiate and adopt such pervasive stereotypes when interacting with their immigrant peers. Using work on racialization and Bourdieu's (1989) concepts of misrecognition and symbolic violence, we analyze language surrounding Mexican, Caribbean, and Central American 'ESL students' in Peers Making Change (PMC) -- a peer-mentoring program initiated by social-justice-oriented multilingual students in a U.S. Southern high school. The school's racial and academic divisions and PMC's focus on student 'motivation', coupled with broader racialization of Latina/o students, enforced divisions between multilingual mentors and 'ESL mentees' and hindered social-justice-oriented program goals. Educators and Latina/o multilingual student mentors unknowingly participated in symbolic violence as they circulated racialized language about (Spanish-speaking) 'ESL students' presumed 'cultural values' and 'lack of' academic skills and motivation, indicating the micro-negotiations unfolding during responses to racial stereotypes and hierarchies in U.S. schools.