Claims of voting flyers for migrants rile US politics
McALLEN, Texas — A humanitarian organization in northeastern Mexico said it did not create flyers urging migrants to vote for President Joe Biden that were filmed at its shelter sparking conservative outrage.
Accusations that Resource Center Matamoros was encouraging noncitizens to vote gained momentum after posts displayed Spanish-language flyers instructing migrants to vote illegally for Biden once they arrived in the U.S. The flyers contained the logo of the organization, but it was not clear who created or posted them. Videos showed them on the interior walls of portable toilets at the center’s shelter near Mexico’s border with Texas.
Resource Center Matamoros founder Gaby Zavala told The Associated Press the organization doesn’t know who made the flyers and said her group “does not encourage immigrants to register to vote or cast ballots in the U.S.”
The provenance of the flyers was still unknown Wednesday. They contained errors in spelling and grammar, and appeared to include verbatim paragraphs from the organization’s English-language website that were translated into Spanish using online translation software.
Despite the flyers’ uncertain origin, claims about them have proliferated online and came up during a congressional hearing Tuesday, when House Republicans raised them in their questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The episode reflects how rapidly claims related to the migrant surge at the border can spread and influence the political debate as the presidential election approaches. Former President Donald Trump and his allies have used the surge to say, without evidence, that Democrats are allowing migrants into the country as a way to boost Biden’s reelection chances. Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote in federal elections and historically the number of noncitizens caught attempting to cast a ballot illegally is extremely small.
Images and videos of the flyers at the Matamoros center erupted online after the Heritage Foundation posted them on social media Monday evening.
The conservative think tank shared an image of one of the flyers, which was labeled as coming from Zavala and contained both the Resource Center Matamoros logo and another logo in Spanish reading, “all with Biden.” It also shared a video that showed multiple flyers posted inside portable toilets where migrants might see them.
The letter misspelled the Spanish word for welcome, “bienvenidos,” as “bienvedinos.” It also contained minor grammatical errors in Spanish, including an incorrect tense (“mientras esperan” should be “mientras esperen”) and the United States in lower case (“estados unidos”).
The text appeared to lift a paragraph from Resource Center Matamoros’ Englishlanguage website, reciting the first two sentences verbatim, but translated to Spanish. The flyer added two sentences urging migrants to vote for Biden.
“This flyer ... seeks to prey on unsophisticated illegals and encourages them to illegally vote,” the Heritage Foundation wrote on one of its social posts.
Heritage also published a short audio clip of Zavala speaking with an unidentified male. After the male says he is trying to help as many people as possible before Trump gets reelected, Zavala can be heard saying, “Believe me, we’re in the same boat.” The ninesecond exchange did not include any further mention of voting or elections.
Zavala did not answer questions about the exchange and told the AP that her organization does not support political campaigns for or against candidates. She said such activity would be “outside the scope of our mission.”
The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.