Trump wins over Latinos who say he is better on immigration

On a Saturday afternoon this spring, about 40 Spanish-speaking Trump supporters waved American flags along Oracle Road in Catalina, Arizona, as cars and motorcycles sped by.

Dressed in red, white and blue, they drew cheers and middle fingers from passing motorists.

The jubilant MAGA group continued to wave their flags unperturbed, with the rugged, beautiful Catalina Mountains in the background.

“I want to support a candidate who cares about the United States, a candidate who will continue to work to preserve the country that is so great and that so many of us love,” said Jorge Rivas, a 57-year-old who owns a restaurant in Catalina.

In this small town of 6,400 just north of Tucson, Latinos are making their case for Donald Trump.

They are not alone.

Latinos across the country are dissatisfied with President Biden and are increasingly willing to look beyond Trump’s nativist policies and vote for him in November.

They see Trump as someone who will uphold conservative family values, tackle crime and inflation and stop the flow of undocumented migrants crossing the border.

And after Biden’s dismal performance during Thursday’s debate, they have little confidence that the 81-year-old president will stay in office for another four years.

“The number of times he made mistakes far exceeded my expectations… he doesn’t even have the capacity to be president of a card club. He should be retired, sitting in his house, not running the most powerful country in the world,” Rivas said. “The Democratic Party is taking advantage of the poor man.”

Trump received limited support from the Latino community in 2016, with only 26% of Hispanic voters nationwide adopting his campaign promise that year, according to the Pew Research Center.

But in 2020, 38% of Latin American voters chose Trump, and even more voters are expected to do so in November.

According to an April Pew Center poll, 44% of Latinos in the US would vote for Trump in the upcoming election, compared to 52% for Biden.

A New York Times/Siena poll published in April found that 46% of Latinos would vote for the former president, compared with 40% who would support Biden.

According to Pew, 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020.

“In 2020, we won more Hispanic votes than any Republican in over 50 years,” Trump said at a recent event. “In 2024, we’re going to win an even larger share of the Hispanic vote, setting records for Republicans at all levels.”

Rivas, who is from El Salvador and married to a woman from Mexico, sees no contradiction between being a Spanish-speaking immigrant and his support for Trump, who has labeled immigrants “bad hombres” and rapists.

“He just uses the wrong words at certain times. I will not be carried away by the media narrative that automatically defines him as a racist,” the naturalized American citizen told The Post. “How much do these words harm us compared to the policies the Biden administration has put in place that really affect us?”

A life-size cutout of Trump greets locals at the entrance to Rivas’ restaurant, Sammy’s Mexican Grill.

The eatery is decorated with patriotic paraphernalia and photos of the 45th president.

The menu includes a “Trump Burrito” and a “MAGA Burger” with a toothpick flag encouraging guests to vote red.

Rivas sees Biden’s border policy as a colossal failure and supports Trump’s hardline approach.

“Many of us immigrants come here because it is a country of laws, of opportunities, a country that gives us confidence where we can raise our families without fear for our children, where they will have the opportunity to are what they want. to be,” he said.

Rivas is also Catholic, like many Latinos, and he likes Trump’s views on abortion and his support for conservative family values.

Reymundo Torres, president of the Arizona Latino Republican Association, said his ancestors came from Mexico in 1915, fleeing a revolution caused by leftist despots.

Now he believes it is his duty to fight for his rights, a better economy and more secure borders.

“How can you justify disrespecting our immigration laws, violating our national sovereignty without the consent of our nation, crossing our border to infiltrate for whatever reason you think is necessary. That seems illegitimate to me,” Torres said. “I’ve lived here in Arizona my entire life. I’m a third-generation Arizonan. We don’t experience racism here to the extent that you would in liberal cities and towns.”

If Hispanic Americans like Rivas and Torres draw clear distinctions between themselves and those who recently crossed the border illegally, Trump’s campaign is doing the same.

Earlier this month, it rebranded its “Latinos for Trump” outreach as “Latino Americans for Trump” with a rally in Las Vegas.

“We as Latinos want to be treated as we are. We are already American. This is our country,” said Jaime Florez, the Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. “We came here to stay, we came here to pursue our American dream, we have our families here and we have our future in the United States… Trump gave us the opportunity to feel more united with the idea of ​​living together to work to make America great again.”

In 2020, Biden won Nevada, and this year it is considered a key battleground.

Those on the ground say they are seeing greater openness to Trump among the state’s Hispanic population, which tends to be working class and struggling in today’s economy.

“It’s easier for me to go out and convince Latinos to support Donald Trump than it was in 2016, when I was getting death threats,” said Jesus Marquez, a Las Vegas Republican activist who worked on the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “I would get attacked on my social media because I was openly supportive of Donald Trump.”

After the 2020 defeat, they learned their lesson, he said.

Now they are voting, which is legal in Nevada, as are the Democrats.

“We have a greater chance of winning now than in 2020,” Marquez said. “The situation in the country that we have is a total mess, we have inflation, everything is so high, that it is costing ordinary people their American dream.”

In Florida, the Cuban-American population has long been in the red, and Trump has a comfortable lead going into November. An April poll by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research showed Trump with a comfortable eight percentage point lead over Biden in the state, while Trump has a 13.1 percentage point lead among Latinos.

“This is Trump country,” said Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia, who is also the national leader of Latino Americans for Trump.

Back in Catalina, Viridiana Aguirre Gonzalez, 41, a housewife from Mexico, said she plans to vote for Trump.

Although an immigrant herself, she agrees with Trump on immigration issues, saying migrants should follow immigration laws and come to the U.S. legally.

“We have to be realistic. Some people come here to escape something. There is no border control to stop it. There have been some delinquents,” the naturalized U.S. citizen said in Spanish, adding that she was aware of a young immigrant woman who was raped by other migrants as she crossed the border.

“Her life is ruined. Others think we are racists. That is not true. We want the welfare of the country, we want them to follow the constitution,” she said. “I want peace.”

She added: “Trump is like a medicine. He is the cure.”