Latino Republicans and independents back Trump’s deportation plan, to a point

Anthony Gavic recalls hearing his grandmother describe her migration to the United States from Mexico in the early part of the last century, and how she settled in Texas at a time when white Americans used the racist slur “wetback” to refer to Mexicans.

Gavic, 57, said he was not disturbed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, one modeled on a 1950s initiative called “Operation Wetback.”

Rather, Gavic said he saw Trump as drawing practical parallels with that earlier operation. He dismissed concerns that the plan would target Latinos.

“I don’t think he is going to start rounding up Mexicans or Venezuelans,” said Gavic, a Republican who remodels homes in a Milwaukee suburb. “He is just going to put in an effective plan to round up or corral or target those people who really shouldn’t be here.”

Republicans gathered in Milwaukee this week for their national convention adopted an immigration platform in line with Trump’s agenda. In addition to a mass deportation plan, the platform includes pledges to finish the wall and to “stop the migrant invasion.” The messaging is even harsher in tone than when Trump first ran for president in 2016. But Republicans are betting it won’t turn off Latino voters this election cycle.

Surveys and focus groups show that Latino voters, like other Americans, have warmed to more punitive measures on illegal immigration, and that more Latinos are saying they trust Trump and Republicans over President Joe Biden and Democrats to better handle migration at the Southern border. The trend lines are especially true for Latino Republicans and right-leaning independents, who are more likely to call the situation at the border a crisis, and to echo Trump’s depictions of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally as a threat to public safety, national security and the nation’s cultural identity.

Still, Trump remains unpopular with Latino voters overall. Whether the appetite for tougher immigration measures translates into broader Hispanic support for him and his policies at the ballot box remains unclear. Although some surveys have found an increase in the share of voters who favor a national effort by law enforcement to deport immigrants in the country illegally, reliable data on Hispanic voters is limited.

Surveys from the Marquette Law School Poll, in Wisconsin and nationally, show that a small majority of Hispanic voters reject deporting those in the country illegally. That opposition is likely to be even higher if the dragnet is said to target immigrants who have been in the country for years and who have well-established jobs and families, said Charles Franklin, who directs the law school Poll.

“There is a general change in how punitive people are willing to be, but how you frame the question really matters,” Franklin said.

More than two dozen Latino voters, largely Republicans and independents, supported those findings in interviews in recent weeks but offered some nuanced views. Most said that they wanted the government to take a harder line on immigration enforcement, and that they believed Trump would do so more effectively. Roughly half said they would support some sort of far-reaching deportation effort.

But most of those in favor of a crackdown said it should focus solely on immigrants in the U.S. illegally who have committed crimes or are recent arrivals.

Many were unfamiliar with Trump’s platform, including his plans to round up people without permanent legal status on a mass scale and to detain them in camps pending their deportation. Many Latino Republicans and independents who had heard of such campaign pledges did not believe that Trump would be able to fulfill his promises.

“Last time, he didn’t even finish the wall. What’s he going to do this time?” asked Edgar Armenta Soto, a 28-year-old Marine Corps veteran who migrated from Mexico as a child and was studying aviation at Southern Utah University. He said he nonetheless agreed with Trump’s economic policies and planned to vote for him.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, Marissa Perez, 39, a Republican, said that her father crossed the border illegally from Mexico years ago. She did not support putting people in camps and abhorred the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.

But she said that she did not believe the system under the Biden administration was working. “I am more in favor of Trump’s way of doing it than the current way it is right now,” Perez, a former nurse, said.

Trump, who has built his political career on pledges to curb immigration, has not minced words in his promises to expand his first-term crackdown if he were to return to power. In interviews, he has pointed to mass deportations during the Eisenhower administration as an example that his own operation could follow.

That earlier initiative was designed to expel Mexicans living in the country illegally. At least 1.3 million people — some of them U.S. citizens — were swept up in the campaign, which used military techniques and racial stereotypes to justify sometimes brutal practices.

During the June presidential debate, Trump dodged a question about whether his plans for mass removals would ensnare every such immigrant, including those who have jobs, are married to citizens or have been here for decades. Asked for clarification on the policy later, an adviser to his campaign pointed to the party’s convention platform. The document is a stark contrast to the stance that the Republican National Committee laid out in a 2012 report, which outlined plans to improve Hispanic outreach by embracing “comprehensive immigration reform.”

“A majority of Americans, including Hispanics, want mass deportations for illegal immigrants, not Joe Biden’s mass amnesties and Border Bloodbath,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.

Traditionally, Hispanic Republicans have been less likely than other Republicans to say that increasing border security and deportations are important policy goals. They have been more likely instead to favor establishing legal means for immigrants who entered illegally to stay in the country, according to the Pew Research Center.

But historians, pollsters and strategists say that Latinos’ views on the issue have shifted based on numerous factors. As the GOP stepped up its anti-immigration language and policy, Democrats have seen their advantage erode in recent years, as more Hispanic voters perceive that the party has broken its promises to expand legal pathways to citizenship.

Anais Refunjol, 36, a Republican who works in human resources in Contra Costa, California, said that she obtained her citizenship after migrating from Venezuela in 2004 on a tourist visa and requesting asylum. She was shocked when she heard the details of the 1950s mass deportation plan, but she did not believe that Trump would take such extreme measures.

She said she was alarmed by more recent Venezuelan immigrants, pointing to local and national news reports of their involvement in grisly crimes, though studies have shown that illegal immigration does not increase violent crime.

“Putting them in a camp and deporting them?” Refunjol said in Spanish. “It sounds great to me.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.