Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
A New York Times survey of Latino voters this past weekend, just a few weeks from the November 5 elections, concludes that attacks by the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, against immigrants have not translated into more significant support for the Democrats.
This conclusion, at least for me, is not surprising because I know how diverse the Latino vote is, which many erroneously catalog as a “block” of voters. It isn’t.
It is extremely diverse. And that diversity includes the good and the bad. There are extremists on the left and right. Liberals, moderates, and conservatives. There are inclusive people, and there are racist and prejudiced people. There are good, decent, and hardworking people, and there are dishonorable people. There are rich people, poor people, and the middle class. People with advanced university degrees and those with limited education. They are of every race and every color. And there are Latinos of color who describe themselves as “white supremacists.”
There are even Latinos whose families have lived here since before this was the United States. Some arrived recently, sometimes without documents, and are the first to applaud Trump when he says that he’s going to close the border and conduct mass deportations. They think, erroneously, that Trump is not talking about them.
In fact, according to Agencia EFE, in the Marist College (N.Y.) survey, “some 67% of those interviewed believe that Trump isn’t talking about people like them when he speaks about immigrants, while half of those born abroad say the same.”
According to the article, “more than a third of those interviewed said that they support both the construction of a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico, as well as the deportation of undocumented immigrants.” There are other surveys, like one from the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) at the University of Maryland, which found that voters from all parties and all ethnic groups favor a path to citizenship over mass deportations.
It is expected that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will obtain a majority of the Latino vote. Still, the level of support is lower than that of other Democratic candidates in previous elections. Latino support for Harris, according to the survey, is 56% compared to 37% for Trump. And more Latinas than Latinos support Harris.
I’m not an expert in psychology or human behavior, and I can’t explain why a candidate who denigrates immigrants daily has the support of Latinos.
But we can’t minimize the danger of this.
Dismissing it by saying that Trump will do none of what he says is like having amnesia about the first term of his presidency, where he did terrible things that he promised: the Muslim ban and nominating Supreme Court Justices aligned with his promise to end the right to abortion, and that happened.
He declared war against immigrants, marked by a sadistic cruelty that led to separating babies and children from their parents at the border to “deter” others from coming. He said he would not accept the results of the 2020 elections because, if he lost, it was because of “fraud.” He ended up instigating a violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, at the hands of his fanatics. Now he is talking about turning the military on Americans who oppose him. The “enemy from within,” he calls them.
And he promises mass deportations that, according to Trump himself, will be a “bloody story” where he will also seek intervention from the National Guard and military to conduct nationwide raids. On top of the fact that removing 5% of the U.S. labor force would be an economic disaster, mass deportations are a humanitarian and legal nightmare. Perhaps many of those Latinos who believe Trump’s policies will not affect them will be surprised if they become victims of racial profiling and fall into some immigration dragnet simply for their physical appearance or skin color.
This has happened before. Time magazine reported that the repatriation of Mexicans in the 1930s, supposedly to “free up” jobs for Americans in the middle of the Great Depression, resulted in the deportation of 2 million people, 60% of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent.
But perhaps here the statement from German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller about apathy and inaction against Nazism applies: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist…. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
So think long and hard before minimizing Trump’s insults and attacks as something “innocuous” and “entertaining.” If he is back at the White House, you never know when you will be the victim of his extreme policies, even if you are a citizen.
The original Spanish version is here.
