A WALL BETWEEN ’EM

THEY WERE A part of the electorate the Republican Party set out to embrace in 2016 — but were shoved away almost as soon as Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator at Trump Tower.

The push against immigrants and immigration reform by the leading GOP contenders has grown only more intense as the campaign has raged on, with Trump’s main rival, the Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz, backing his call to boot the country’s almost 12 million undocumented immigrants as quickly as possible.

“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” Trump said at his now-infamous June 2015 announcement.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . ... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump again dialed up the rhetoric in December when he called for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the country.

Not to be outdone, Cruz last month also encouraged cops to patrol Muslim neighborhoods.

The haunting question now for Republicans is how this attitude will play through the primary season and into November — especially in states like New York, which has a large immigrant population.

Mayra Aldas, a newly minted U.S. citizen from Ecuador said she was shocked by sudden anti-immigrant sentiment that swept the race. She will be voting in America for the first time in 2016.“The candidates don’t have the facts right,” said Aldas, 32, who lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

“That’s one of the things that pushed me to become a citizen, because I wanted to vote in this election.”