Posted on 12/19/2023 12:18:20 PM PST by Red Badger
David Siders is POLITICO's Politics editor.
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A visit to the border city of El Paso shows how the politics of immigration are shifting — and what’s really underneath it.
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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 and strained 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. 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.”
Tv screen showing “MIGRANT NUMBERS RISING.” 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. Earlier this year, he said that, if elected, he will seek to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants — a proposal he’d floated during his presidency but that most legal experts believe would violate the 14th Amendment. He said he will use his administration’s authority to “keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America,” suggesting an ideological test would be implemented at the border. 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.
Locator map of El Paso, Texas A map of El Paso.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump plans to hold immigrants in camps while waiting removal and to redirect military money to use for the campaign.
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.
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“The fact that someone like Donald Trump is still the frontrunner,” Garcia told me, “it’s almost like they want a dictator. It doesn’t matter if he follows democratic processes. … There’s a certain kind of dictatorship mentality that’s developing, which is happening in other countries, as well.”
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.
Leaving the church, I walked up the street and into El Paso’s downtown, where the city’s WinterFest was in full swing. White lights were strung from trees, young parents pushed strollers and families lined up at food trucks for hot chocolate, churros and elotes.
Rev. Rafael Garcia of Sacred Heart Church Rev. Rafael Garcia of Sacred Heart Church worries about polls suggesting a warming to Donald Trump, who had redefined immigration politics here.
“Get the key and lock the gates,” said Rick Delgado, a Navy veteran who told me he leans Democratic and who keeps a U.S. Customs and Border Protection number in his phone.
He said he thinks Biden is “doing whatever he can.” But it was the state — not the Biden administration — that had strung razor wire on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and passed legislation that would authorize police to arrest migrants.
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.”
Top: Overlook looking down into Mexico Bottom: US/Mexico Border Crossing 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.”
On a small stage, a performer began to sing “Feliz Navidad,” and a boy tugged his mother toward a stall with light-up spin toys for sale. 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.
Top: Roy Rosales Bottom: El Paso’s downtown, where the city’s WinterFest was in full swing. Roy Rosales (top), at El Paso’s WinterFest downtown, says “there are a lot of Mexican people looking forward to Trump” in 2024.
“Now,” she told me, “I want Trump back.”
In Washington, the politics of immigration were flaring. In addition to Trump’s rhetoric, lawmakers were negotiating over proposals to tie stricter immigration measures to funding for Ukraine, frightening some immigration advocates and progressive Democrats.
Garcia, whose family fled Cuba when he was nine and who told me he doesn’t consider himself a member of either political party, has spent years ministering to immigrants and represents something of the old-school liberal approach to the topic: that immigrants deserve compassion, particularly if they are fleeing political or economic hardship. During the Trump era, Garcia said mass and heard confessions at immigrant detention centers. His church, just blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border, shelters migrants in its gym. He told me that when “people see the reality, and they meet people that are immigrants, the heart changes and the mind changes.”
But Garcia also understands what crowds of migrants can look like on TV — or to people who “come around here and they drive and say, ‘Why are all these people here? You know, this is not controllable, this is not good.”
It wasn’t long ago that many Democrats saw immigration as a winning issue for them, at least long-term.
The idea, back when Trump was railing in the 2016 campaign against “rapists” and criminals crossing the border, was that even if his economic populism appealed to some working-class Latinos, his racist rhetoric and strict immigration proposals would turn off a significant chunk of a rapidly growing voting bloc. At the time, a majority of Republicans supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while nearly three-quarters of Hispanics polled by Gallup in the run-up to the 2016 election said Hillary Clinton’s views on immigration came closer than Trump’s to their own.
Trump in that election won just 28 percent of the Latino vote. But his presidency, and everything he did on immigration during it, didn’t stop the gradual erosion of Democrats’ margins with Latino voters. From 2018 to 2020 to 2022, the Democratic advantage over Republicans among Hispanic voters shrunk from 47 percentage points to 25 percentage points to 21 percentage points, according to Pew.
Biden/Harris bumper stickers It wasn’t long ago that many Democrats saw immigration as a winning issue for them, at least long-term.
And it isn’t clear that immigration, as an issue, is doing anything to arrest the decline. Even in Texas, where shifting demographics had for years been presumed likely to eventually turn the state blue, more than 40 percent of Hispanic voters surveyed this year by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin said they agreed with the idea of deporting undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
“When Republicans were in control and fucking up, and Trump was as extreme as he was in his first campaign, all that stuff did work to our benefit,” Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster, told me. “But I think it always had a half-life. … And right now, the problem is on our watch. And whatever’s happening, it’s Biden’s responsibility, and there’s a sense that things are slipping out of control again.”
The idea that Biden is principally responsible for this weighs heavily on Democrats. In El Paso, I met for lunch one day with the local congresswoman, Veronica Escobar, who told me that “fundamentally, all people are frustrated with politicians” and that, “unfortunately Democrats are getting the brunt of that right now, and people have brainwashed themselves into thinking that somehow Donald Trump solves this.”
Top: Congresswoman, Veronica Escobar
Bottom: Mario Porras Top: Local congresswoman Veronica Escobar says “fundamentally, all people are frustrated with politicians.” Bottom: Mario Porras, the El Paso Community Foundation’s director of binational affairs, says he and other community leaders tend to talk about the border not as a cultural problem, but as a logistical one.
Escobar knows immigration is more complicated than that. Just about everyone in El Paso does. A one-time garment-making hub tied to Juárez by a series of bridges and family lines, many people here draw connections to both sides of the border. They cross to work, or shop or eat lunch, and they are steeped in border politics. Surges come and go. Tensions flare, then subside.
If El Paso, in the national consciousness, is a “political pinata,” Mario Porras, the El Paso Community Foundation’s director of binational affairs, told me, he and other community leaders tend to talk about the border differently — not as a cultural problem, but as a logistical one. They’re frustrated by slowdowns at ports of entry, or by the disorderly processing of asylum-seekers. They fault the federal government for a lack of coordination, or preparation, or, as Porras put it, a “lack of willingness to go the extra mile” in “planning on how you deal with this.”
Perfumeria Shop In 2020, Trump did better in El Paso County than he had four years earlier, cutting his losing margin by about 8 percentage points.
It’s been like this forever. El Pasoans still bring up the national headlines that the county judge in 1986, Pat O’Rourke, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s father, drew for sending the Reagan administration a bill for $10 million in costs incurred providing for undocumented immigrants. At the time, he called El Paso, now a city of nearly 700,000 people, “the natural land passage to economic opportunity.” He didn’t have a problem with that; he just wanted the federal government to pay for it.
These days, Mario D’Agostino, a deputy city manager, said the city is getting the reimbursements it needs. But the surges are still a burden on city services.
“We’re an extraordinarily hospitable city,” Steve Ortega, a former Democratic member of the city council, told me.
However, he said, “This city, like this nation, is divided on this issue.”
Left: Steve Ortega, a former Democratic member of the city council, says frustration with the border situation may explain rising support for Trump in the area. Right: Mario D’Agostino, a deputy city manager, says migrant surges have been a burden on city services.
In 2020, Trump did better in El Paso County than he had four years earlier, cutting his losing margin by about 8 percentage points. Ortega said frustration with the border situation “may explain some of those Trump numbers.” At a minimum, he said, “the surges are forcing critical commentary on the left.”
He was referring to the criticism of Biden’s handling of influx of migrants from prominent Democratic leaders of several cities and states, including New York Mayor Eric Adams. That was getting attention from Democrats in Washington, too.
Escobar, a national co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, said, “People are really frustrated. They want to see order. They want to see government manage situations. And that’s, I think, why you’re hearing Democrats in places like New York and Illinois sounding the alarm and in some cases sounding more like Republicans — I’m thinking about Mayor Eric Adams — sounding more like Republicans than Democrats. The fundamental problem is people want an easy fix. This is neither an easy issue, nor is there an easy fix.”
Earlier this year, Escobar and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Florida, introduced a comprehensive immigration bill that would bolster border security, a priority of Republicans, and create a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, among other reforms.
Most of the Democrats I spoke with in El Paso, like Ortega, support it. But they know it is a massive lift. Bipartisan bills on immigration have a decades-long record of failure.
House with US flags and lady liberty adorning the front facade. Immigration, while motivating for Republicans, does not typically register near the top of the list of voter concerns.
The fault for that — for the lack of comprehensive legislation — doesn’t lie with Biden, Escobar said, but with Congress. The president can only implement laws that Congress writes.
“It is our job,” she said. “We have failed over and over again.”
Still, she said, “I do worry that Democrats will get blamed simply because the president is in the White House.”
When I asked if she thought Biden himself would pay a political price for it, Escobar told me, “I hope not, but I’m afraid of that.”
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The Mexicans I know and are friends with can’t stand Biden and are all in for Trump, but they are legal, mostly 2nd and 3rd generation and have real jobs and families that are being decimated by demonrat policies.
That’s long winded. What was the gist?
Suuureee you do.
We hear every election how Hispanics (and even Blacks) are abandoning the Democrat party in droves, and then comes the election and same old, same old.
But this time is different!!!!!
Yeah right
That he’s surprised that Mexican-Americans don’t love Democrat Joe Biden...............
Well I guess if they don’t know who to vote for, they aren’t brown!
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that election fraud is the operating variable.
Yes, hispanic support for Trump has not stopped increasing. Yes, they’re abandoning the democrat party.
but the democrats are experts at stealing elections. It’s that simple.
No; the Democrats wouldn’t succeed if the other wing of the Uniparty (the GOP) didn’t help them do it.
Let`s all climb on top odf a freight train,
cross the border into Juarez and ask for free tamales.
They are cheaper there.
Let`s shop in Mexico, get free phones, and free luxury hotel accomodations.
Then vote for the next Presidente de Mexico on Jube 2, 2024.
We have the right because we are being oppresed by our government.
If the RINOpublicans had any brains they would use this against the DemoMarxist domestic enemy party and start a massive campaign alerting all these illegals that they are being scammed, that the DemoMarxists are trying to turn the USA into the same kind of country they are fleeing from, but once again the RINOpublican party is about as useful as an ice machine in the Arctic. They should call it the “Coma party”
The surprise of mexican-americans supporting Trump, plus another “Trump will be a dictator” screed.
Mexico must surely be empty by now......................
There are a lot of Americans looking forward to Trump. You’re looking at one.
The RINO party won’t capitalize on destructive democratic policies because they are in fact all on the same side, like the Harlem Globetrotters vs. Washington Generals. Sweet Georgia Brown is playing in the background while both parties bamboozle us.
They are, but only the successful ones, none of the welfare crowd will and that’s about 75% of them.
Mexican people? Is that racist or something? I haven’t checked lately.
“What was the gist?”
Hopium...
“ accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country””
The article overtly lies.
They should have saved the ink, its just another orange man bad screed.
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