In his second inaugural address, Donald Trump delivered a memorable message to the Hispanic community. “I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote,” the president said. “We set records, and I will not forget it. I’ve heard your voices in the campaign, and I look forward to working with you in the years to come.”
The details of the rhetoric were predictably wrong — the Republican ticket’s performance with Hispanic voters was improved, but the assertion that it “set records” was absurd — though the comments suggested that Trump might at least try to be slightly less punitive toward the community in his second term.
Nearly five months later, as the White House pursues a radical mass deportation agenda, the president’s assurances are ringing hollow. The Hill reported:
Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R), co-founder of Latinas for Trump, issued a sharp rebuke of President Trump on Sunday as his administration seeks to ramp up deportations and other actions against migrants without legal status. Garcia took particular issue with reported tactics in southern Florida, where immigration officials have allegedly been making arrests in immigration courts and taking other steps to target individuals otherwise in compliance with legal orders.
“I will not stand down,” Garcia wrote by way of social media. “I want to put myself on record: ‘This is not what we voted for. I have always supported [Trump], through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane. I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings — in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims. … This undermines the sense of fairness and justice that the American people value.’”
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, another Miami-area Republican and Trump supporter, similarly described herself as “heartbroken” over the White House’s tactics, adding, “Arrests in immigration courts, including people with I-220A and pending asylum cases, the termination of the CHNV program, which has left thousands exposed to deportation, and other similar measures, all jeopardize our duty to due process that every democracy must guarantee.”
This roughly coincides with the Trump administration pushing to eliminate funding for the Smithsonian’s long-planned National Museum of the American Latino and scrapping the Spanish-language version of the White House’s website. So much for telling Latino voters, “I look forward to working with you.” But I’m also struck by the familiarity of the circumstances: Trump has betrayed Black voters in recent months in ways that are difficult even to count. Trump has betrayed Muslim voters to such an extent that leaders of Arab Americans for Trump decided to change their name. In other words, when it comes to those feeling a sense of buyer’s remorse, Florida’s Ileana Garcia is hardly the only Trump voter and saying, “This is not what we voted for.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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