This is usually the season of hope and inspiration on college campuses, but the politics of immigration and the presidential race spilled into the commencement ceremony Sunday at California State University, Fullerton, in an incident that has continued to reverberate on social media.

A recording shows that the commencement speaker, Maria Elena Salinas, a prominent anchor for the Spanish-language network Univision, was booed after she praised Hispanic students in the crowd, spoke briefly in Spanish and made a critical reference to Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

A university official confirmed Wednesday that tensions had flared during Ms. Salinas’s address to graduates of the College of Communications. The video shows her smiling broadly as members of the audience first began to yell at her when she specifically praised Hispanic journalism graduates. The booing became louder when she referenced Mr. Trump.

The trouble began when Ms. Salinas referred to the assembled graduates as the new “voice of Hispanic America,” drawing cries from the crowd. Hispanics make up the school’s largest single ethnic or racial group — at more than 40 percent of the student body — but many of the graduates were not Hispanic.