LAS VEGAS – Minutes after Donald Trump delivered his standard warnings about drug dealers and criminals illegally crossing the border during a Saturday campaign event, the former president heard from someone who was once in the country illegally but now plans to vote for him.
Elias Trujillo was one of several people who spoke Saturday at a Latino roundtable in Las Vegas intended to spotlight Trump's economic ideas. After Trump finished addressing a small crowd inside the warehouse of a women's cosmetics company, members of the roundtable spoke. Trujillo began by telling his personal story, how his mother brought him and his brothers from northern Mexico to Utah in 1995 to rejoin their father, who was working in construction.
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“We came here legally, but you know, we overstayed, and we were able to make life here in the United States,” Trujillo said, referring to the action of entering the U.S. on a legal visa but not departing when that visa expires.
At least one person in the audience began laughing and applauding, leading Trujillo to laugh and acknowledge, “It is funny.” Trump smiled as he looked at Trujillo.
The moment highlighted the contradictory ways the facts and rhetoric of immigration play in the campaign. The paradoxes are sharper as Trump has simultaneously counted on increased support from Latinos returning him to the White House even as he has centered his campaign on a dark view of immigration.
Trump has said migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, called the recent influx across the southern border an “invasion" and pledged to launch mass deportations if he returns to the White House.
The day before his Las Vegas roundtable, Trump was in Aurora, Colorado, darkly warning that a Venezuelan gang is terrorizing a city of 400,000 that has become a magnet for migrants from that country. The city's Republican mayor said Trump is distorting an isolated problem in the city.
On Saturday, Trump launched his usual criticisms of border policy before pivoting to general praises of the demographic he was courting.
“Hispanic people — they say you can’t generalize, but I think you can — they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have — oh, do you have such energy. Just ease up a little bit, OK? Ease up," Trump said. "You have great ambition, you have great energy, very smart, and you really do, like natural entrepreneurs.”
After the Las Vegas event, Trump headed to Coachella, California, and accused Harris of having “imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World.” There is no evidence to support Trump's claims.
Trump has usually smoothed over any apparent conflict between his warnings on immigration and his support from Latino voters since 2016, when he kicked off his first run by warning of “rapists” crossing the southern border. Many Hispanic voters entered the country legally — or have roots in the U.S. going back generations — and oppose illegal immigration.
The former president and Republican nominee has argued his economic and immigration policies would help Latinos and other minorities, often suggesting contrary to economic data that immigrants are taking what he calls “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.” Around 8 in 10 Hispanic voters say the economy is “one of the most important issues” during this election season, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Opinion Research poll.
Overall, Hispanic voters are about equally likely to say they have a favorable view of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent. Trujillo said during his speech that he was initially wary of Trump but has grown to support the former president.
Trujillo described how his lack of legal status made him feel uncertain about what he could accomplish, but how he “had to make the best of my life.” He said he graduated from high school, got married and had two children, now 12 and 5.
He opened a restaurant that he said is struggling due to the high cost of labor and goods, and said he was hopeful Trump would usher in better economic times.
“I’m happy with the opportunity that Trump has again to run and hopefully get us back on track," Trujillo said. "I think there’s room to make America greater.”
Afterward, Trujillo said in an interview that though his parents overstayed their visas, they achieved legal status. Likewise, Trujillo has been a U.S. citizen since 2011.
He said he has come to understand Trump’s vocal opposition to those entering the country illegally due to concerns about drug and sex trafficking.
But, unprompted, Trujillo said he supports a way for people in the country illegally to obtain legal status, specifically people who have been working and following the law.
“I mean, not an easy pathway, perhaps," he said. “But there should be a pathway for the ones that are already here illegally, but who have created a life.”
That proposal has been a hallmark of immigration reform policies for decades. Labeled as “amnesty” by immigration hardliners, opposition to letting people who lived in the country illegally become citizens is part of what led to Trump's political rise.
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Riccardi reported from Denver.