A Latino Republican’s rejection of Trump
After the election, Democrats stood aghast — and Republicans in triumph — over President Donald Trump’s increasing support from Hispanic voters. But I have a message for my fellow Republicans: Don’t be so quick to celebrate.
It’s true that Trump did better than expected with some Hispanics, in part because Democrats have long taken these voters for granted. But most Hispanics — 66 percent nationwide — voted for Democrat Joe Biden, including lifelong Republicans like me. A few years ago, I could not imagine saying this, but I did not vote for our Republican president in this month’s election, even though I initially supported him. Instead, I voted for Joe Biden. I know many of my fellow Republicans did the same.
We took this step because we could no longer stomach the president’s attacks on Dreamers, his policies of separating children at the border and his embrace of conspiracy theorists and racists. In crucial swing states, Latinos, inspired by the plight of Dreamers and calls to combat systemic racism, cast ballots for Biden in huge numbers: 63 percent in Arizona, 60 percent in Wisconsin and 69 percent in Pennsylvania. Many of these were young Latinos who, as one of the country’s fastest-growing demographics, will decide future elections.
All of this came into focus on a terrible day in August 2019, when a white nationalist entered a Walmart in my hometown of El Paso and shot and killed 22 Mexican Americans and wounded 24 others. As a third-generation Mexican American and proud Texan, I was devastated by this event. El Paso revealed the grave mistake I’d made in supporting the president.
Only three years before, I had agreed to serve on his Hispanic Advisory Council. I thought he could overhaul our immigration system and bring millions of people out of the shadows, secure our borders and fill labor gaps in many industries. Of course I want to offer jobs to U.S. workers first, but employers face labor shortages across the board. At an August 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, the president expressed support for our concerns.
Within a few weeks of our meeting, Trump delivered a diatribe in Phoenix in which he pledged to create a “deportation task force” and institute a new “ideological certification” for prospective immigrants. It was a 180-degree turn from what he told me: Trump had lied to me and betrayed my trust. He’d treated all of us on the Hispanic Advisory Council as cover for his xenophobia. He told us we were important constituents. Instead, we became his props.
More than 78 percent of undocumented immigrants in America, including 1.2 million Dreamers, work in sectors that the Department of Homeland Security considers essential and critical. We rely on them to harvest and process the food on our dinner plates, and when we shop at the grocery store or when we’re sick at the hospital.
In fact, there are 280,000 undocumented health care workers in this country, according to New American Economy. They risk their lives every day for us; yet these are the people the president pledged to round up and deport. As we enter another wave of COVID-19, that would be as inhumane as it is foolhardy.
The fact is, Trump and the GOP never lifted a finger to achieve immigration reform, instead marching in lockstep behind their leader’s insipid demands for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. As it turned out, the real threat to our safety and our economy did not lie in Mexico or in immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The real threat was sitting in the White House, fiddling while our country burned.
I disagree with Biden on a lot of things, but I believe that at his core, he is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the lives of all Americans. I believe he is an empathetic individual who will try to unite us from the deep division and open hostility that are Trump’s terrible accomplishments.
My decision to vote for Biden — and announcing it publicly — was among the most difficult of my life. Trump’s actions and the complicity of the Republican Party left me no choice.