Even before Donald Trump started talking, it was clear to me that his State of the Union address on Tuesday night was shaping up to be a hostile environment for Latino immigrants. Several Democrats invited “dreamers,” undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children, to attend the event and represent the experiences of young people hoping for immigration reform.
But Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted just hours before the speech that he’d contacted U.S. Capitol police, urging them to check IDs and arrest any “illegal aliens in attendance.” I could see the lines were drawn: Dreamers, who come from Latin America and other parts of the world, were not welcome here.
From there, things got worse. I can’t say I was optimistic about Trump’s address—after all, he’s continually derided Latino and immigrant communities, like the one I grew up in, by painting us as criminals and leading “build the wall” chants at his rallies. But I wondered, hopefully, whether his recent non-partisan bluster could at least initiate a productive conversation about the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which he ended last year.
Instead, Trump took the podium and launched into rhetoric that referenced criminals and members of the violent Central American gang MS-13, fixated on the dangers of chain migration, and refused to fully commit to DACA recipients, who have been waiting anxiously for permission to stay in the only country they know. It wasn’t just bad, which I’d prepared for; it was a flaming dumpster fire of mistruths, and a massive letdown for immigrants and Latinos listening. And, while it was par for the course for Trump, it still upset me to watch such a divisive reality unfold.
As hard-working members of society, we Latinos were largely invisible last night. The only time Trump mentioned us by name was when he patted himself on the back and boasted about the Hispanic unemployment rate reaching an all-time low—something that’s has been happening incrementally since before he was elected. He spent more time evoking images of gang violence to justify his anti-immigrant agenda, describing how “open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities.”
“Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13, and other criminals, to break into our country. We have proposed new legislation that will fix our immigration laws, and support our ICE and Border Patrol Agents, so that this cannot ever happen again,” he said.
By continuing to discuss MS-13 in this context, Trump conflates immigrants and undocumented individuals with criminals and gang members. As a fact-check from the Guardian shows, several studies, including this one from the 2015 National Academy of Sciences, prove that immigrants are actually far less likely to commit crimes than native-born people. Plus, his claim that his administration has put “thousands and thousands and thousands” of MS-13 members behind bars is unverifiable—and likely an overstatement. His narrative leaves out the millions of families who contribute to the economy and only want to provide a better life for their kids—much like my parents, who emigrated from Nicaragua in the middle of a fierce civil war.
Trump had a chance to frame Latinos in a new light after characterizing them as “rapists” and “criminals” in the past, but he didn’t
Trump also turned the attention on “chain migration,” saying that his immigration plan would “protect the nuclear family” and stop immigrants from bringing in “virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” This, as Politico points out, is just not true, because a massive backlog for family visas keeps immigrants for bringing “unlimited” relatives to the U.S. Plus, the hypocrisy of complaining about chain migration has already come back to bite a few Trump officials, given how inextricably tied to U.S. history immigration is. Journalist Jennifer Mendelsohn recently found that relatives of Dan Scavino, an assistant to the president, came to New York from Italy and eventually brought more of their family to America. “Do you think that would count as chain migration?” Mendelsohn asked him on Twitter.
And when it came to DACA, Trump was ambiguous. This was his chance to offer a real pledge. He said he had framework that “generously offers a path to citizenship” to immigrants brought to the U.S. as kids, but didn’t elaborate on what that would look like. The dreamers who showed up crossing their fingers for a solution got a mere 65 words of a 5,000-word speech.
Trump had a chance to frame Latinos in a new light after characterizing them as “rapists” and “criminals” in the past, but he didn’t. He said he had plans that would help struggling immigrant communities, but all he talked about was limitations. As a Latina watching last night, it was obvious that Trump wasn’t really talking to me at all—he was addressing an audience that doesn’t want to see us as a multitudinous, patriotic community of entrepreneurs, politicians, and, of course, college-bound dreamers. For me, this was an address about division and discord, not union.
Julyssa Lopez is a Berlin-based freelance writer and reporter.
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