San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Border chaos widens Latino-GOP split
When more than 1,000 Latino officials — a group of up-and-coming representatives from a fastgrowing demographic — gathered in Phoenix this past week, no one from the Trump administration was there to greet them.
It marked the first time that a presidential administration skipped the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in at least 24 years. But the absence was striking for another reason. As jarring images of severed Central American migrant families played out on television, the White House chose not to make the case for its immigration policy to these key politicians.
For some, the choice was more evidence that the relationship between Latinos in the U.S. and the GOP is not just fractured, but broken — a breach with both immediate and long-term consequences.
GOP strategists are bracing for the potential fallout the turmoil at the border might have on November’s midterm elections, where control of the House — and possibly the Senate — is in play. Some Republicans are warning that President Donald Trump’s racially charged appeals to Anglo voters will doom the party’s relationship with minorities.
“There is a great amount of anxiety about what is happening throughout the country facing the Latino community, and it’s not just immigration,” said Arturo Vargas, the group’s executive director.
Peter Guzman, a Republican who is the president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce in Nevada, said the president is hurting the GOP’s outreach to Latinos in his state, which Trump lost in 2016 and where control of the Senate may hinge this fall. He said Trump damaged the GOP’s standing among Latinos by first showing ambivalence to the plight on the border and then stoking ethnic stereotypes.
“When you call them rapists and say they’re all criminals, it’s bad,” he said. “When he looks into the camera and marginalizes all Hispanics, it’s not good for the party.”
On Saturday, group members questioned the head of the U.S. Census Bureau over the proposed addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 survey, denouncing it as a purely political move.
They said it will result in an undercount of Latino communities.
Acting Director Ron Jarmin said the Census Bureau is barred by law from sharing data with other government agencies.
“People have always had trepidation about responding to a government survey,” Jarmin said. “The critical message that we need to get out to everybody is that participation in the census is safe, it’s secure.”