Activists in swing Michigan county are alarmed by Hispanic voters backing Trump despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric

Activists in swing Michigan county are alarmed by Hispanic voters backing Trump despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric

Dan Soza has seen the harsh realities of Donald Trump’s immigration policies up close and so he is alarmed that many Latino voters in Saginaw, Michigan, do not take seriously the former US president’s threats of mass deportations.

As a child welfare officer in Saginaw, Soza places young unaccompanied refugees in foster families and watched the Trump administration’s separation of children from their parents at the Mexican border in 2018 with alarm. He said the cruelty of that policy, and the former president’s threats against refugees legally in the US, should serve as a warning that Trump might do what he says.

“A lot of people who are Latino or Hispanic – whether it be in Saginaw, Michigan, or in the country – when they hear him say those things, they don’t think he’s talking about them,” said Soza.

“What really worries me is that people don’t remember their history. This has happened before. We’ve seen mass deportations before and when it happened American citizens were deported.”

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  • dan1101@lemm.ee
    125·
    1 month ago

    How can Latinos not realize how much Trump hates them? It’s his main topic, how the dirty immigrants are pouring across the border bringing crime and taking American jobs. He and his cronies say it over and over with every speech.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      73·
      1 month ago

      Because they’re not immigrants anymore, he’s not talking about them, you see, they’re white now.

      Irish and Italians did something similar for a while.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      60·
      1 month ago

      Because they got there legally, he’s not talking about them. Except they don’t realise that they’re voting for a world where border patrol will still harass them based on how they look.

      • Vanon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        1 month ago

        And by their names and associations in a database somewhere. I bet there are even some cowards that think voting for him will somehow save them. (Spoiler: It won’t, and he’s laughing at these fools helping exterminate them.)

        • 418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 month ago

          Kris Kobach removed Kansas voters from the voters’ roll because they had foreign-sounding names (many hispanic). Sure, he got in trouble for it in court, but it was too late to affect the election results. And Trump later appointed him to his election interference commission.

          They have the database already. Minorities will be targeted regardless of citizenship.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
      27·
      1 month ago

      Their Spanish channels are ridiculously overrun with right wing propaganda. My wife is Venezuelan, and it’s crazy the crap her parents believe. And they are sweet, non-hateful people. But they live in a little bubble where all the news fed to them is through a right wing filter, and they don’t believe it because it’s not like they’re watching Fox News or something.