‘There Are a Lot of Mexican People Looking Forward to Trump’
A visit to the border city of El Paso shows how the politics of immigration are shifting — and what’s really underneath it.
By David Siders 12/19/2023POLITICO goes on a road-trip to report back to DEMOCRATS, no other reasons8 page article, posting 1 page
EL PASO, Texas — Soon the sun would set over West Texas and the Rev. Rafael Garcia would slip into his white robe and walk to the front of his cavernous church to say mass. It was the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and he was going to talk about Mary.
But before that, Garcia’s mind was on more terrestrial concerns. On a couch in a room off the sanctuary, he told me that he worried about what the freeze in the weather forecast would mean for the asylum seekers gathered on the sidewalks around his church. He worried about the violence and political instability in their home countries that prompted many of them to flee in the first place.
And he worried, on this side of the border, about polls suggesting a warming to Donald Trump, who had redefined immigration politics here. Earlier this fall, an explosion of migrant crossings had turned El Paso into a conservative media sensation andstrained the patience even of Garcia’s heavily Democratic, historically welcoming border region. City officials opened temporary shelters and for those with final destinations further north — the vast majority of migrants arriving here — helped run buses to New York, Chicago and Denver. The city’s Democratic mayor, Oscar Leeser, said at a news conference that the city had reached a “breaking point.”
A man stands outside of a church in El Paso selling paleteria. El Paso is a city where more than 80 percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino in a county where Biden pumelled Trump by a more than two-to-one margin three years ago.
Then, for several weeks, there’d been a lull. But by the time I met with Garcia at Sacred Heart Church, border crossings were ticking back up again. On the evening news, the local ABC affiliate warned, “ MIGRANT NUMBERS RISING .” The city was placing some migrants in hotels. It seemed like only a matter of time before El Paso, once again, became a flashpoint in the border wars.“Right now,” Garcia told me, “I’m in a pessimistic moment.” Earlier this fall, an explosion of migrant crossings had turned El Paso into a conservative media sensation.
Donald Trump, the former president and frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, was ratcheting up his anti-immigration rhetoric, accusing immigrants of “ poisoning the blood of our country” and promising to go far beyond the already-rigid measures he pursued while in office. And, speaking to a crowd in Iowa in September, Trump promised to “ carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history ,” following the model of immigrant roundups in the Eisenhower era.
That was just part of what was bothering Garcia. What troubled him more was that none of this posturing seemed to be hurting Trump, who is clobbering the rest of the Republican primary field and beating President Joe Biden in some recent polls . Instead, it may be helping him. In an NBC News poll this fall, voters by an 18-point margin said Republicans handle immigration better than Democrats — the party’s largest advantage ever on the issue. In a CBS News poll, two-thirds of Americans disapproved of the way Biden was handling immigration. Sacred Heart Church, a few blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border. “We’re in a very difficult moment,” the reverend says.
The growing appeal of a pro-Trump, hardline immigration mentality was even evident here, in a city where more than 80 percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino, and in a county where Biden pummeled Trump by more than 35 percentage points three years ago.
Compared to Biden, Delgado said, Texas’ hardline Republican governor, Greg Abbott, “is doing a better job.”
Nearby, eating popcorn with hot sauce, Roy Rosales, an executive chef who was born just across the border, in Juárez, Mexico, told me, “Trump, he started rough. But now that you see it, when Biden came in, he messed everything up.” The U.S.-Mexico border crossing, where the state has passed legislation that would authorize police to arrest migrants.
He said, “There are a lot of Mexican people looking forward to Trump.”Jaime Tacuba and his wife, Daniela Simental, walked by in matching Mickey Mouse Christmas sweaters. “Everything’s gone to shit,” Tacuba said.
“It’s getting really bad with a lot of the people coming in,” said Simental, who was born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua and immigrated with her family when she was 12. She didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, she said. But lately, she’s thinking differently about it.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/road-trip-el-paso-2024-00131703