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.
Mr. Gavic, 57, said he was not disturbed by former President Donald J. 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, Mr. Gavic said he saw Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Trump and Republicans over President 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 Mr. Trump’s depictions of undocumented immigrants as a threat to public safety, national security and the nation’s cultural identity.
