Trump Draws, and Repels, Nevada Latinos With His Anti-Immigrant Message

Two months ago, Javier Barajas hosted former President Donald J. Trump at Il Toro E La Capra, one of five restaurants he owns in Las Vegas.

Mr. Barajas, 65, had eagerly backed Hillary Clinton when she ran for president in 2008; he previously welcomed President Biden to one of his other restaurants. But he has thrown his support to Mr. Trump this year for one major reason: skyrocketing prices on everything from the ingredients in his entrees to the gas for his catering truck.

His nephew, Justin Favela, was crafting a piece of traditional Mexican folk art from tissue paper when he began receiving angry and confused texts from friends and family who had seen the news of Mr. Trump’s visit on social media and the nightly news.

Mr. Favela, a 38-year-old artist, has economic concerns that resemble his uncle’s. Higher rents, increased costs for the supplies to create his art and student loans leave him stressed about his future.

But he will cast a reluctant vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, spurred primarily by Mr. Trump’s increasingly dark and racist portrayals of immigrants like those in his own family.

“I work 12 hours a day just to be alive — just to be able to pay rent. I can’t even afford a house. The Democrats have been weak,” Mr. Favela said, describing how the cost of a gallon of glue, which is essential for his work, has doubled in the last three years.

“But gun to my head I would not vote for Trump,” he added. “To still vote for somebody that called everybody from Mexico rapists and has these terrible violent border policies shows that you’re not interested in supporting humanity and helping people, you’re interested in the bottom dollar.”

The former president has braided his economic pitch that Americans would be better off under a second Trump administration to increasingly vitriolic and openly nativist attacks on undocumented immigrants. Appealing to voters of color, he has frequently claimed migrants are taking jobs and housing that might otherwise go to Black and Latino Americans, accusations that are not supported by available data. In rally after rally, he has cast migrants as a violent invading force responsible for degraded life in America’s towns and cities, and promised “the largest mass deportation operation in history.”

The message is registering among Nevada’s Latino voters in the closing weeks of the campaign. Interviews with nearly two dozen such voters, of various ideological stripes, reveal similar rifts between friends and family over whom to support. For some, despite the financial concerns that might otherwise sway them toward Mr. Trump, his incessant attacks on immigrants are too much. Still, many appear prepared to look past his escalations and back a candidate they believe will help their livelihoods.

Mr. Barajas’s frustrations capture the potency of the Republicans’ economic argument. Nevada’s service-heavy economy was crushed by the pandemic, and while the recovery has been strong, the state still has the highest unemployment rate nationally and some of the highest prices for gas and groceries.

“I used to pay three years ago, $32 for a case of eggs. Now it’s about $100” for the same crate of about 200 eggs, said Mr. Barajas, who arrived in the United States from Mexico in 1978 illegally and became a citizen in the early 1990s.

He added: “I don’t trust Trump 100 percent, but much better than Kamala. I know he is going to make mistakes. I know he is not going to do everything he says, but I know he is going to do much better for this country.”

Latino voters have been a key part of the coalition that has propelled Democrats to success in Nevada for the last 20 years. Ms. Harris’s campaign has promoted economic proposals that they believe would bring down the cost of staples, as well as housing. Nationally, the campaign has run millions in Spanish language television advertising and said it would spend close to $3 million in October on Spanish-language radio advertising. They didn’t offer numbers specific to Nevada.

Emilia Pablo, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said in a statement that Democrats were working to “drive home the stark choice they face at the ballot box this election.” She pointed to Mr. Trump repeatedly pushing for mass deportations, separating migrant children from their families and calling for the end to birthright citizenship.

Added Matt A. Barreto, a campaign pollster for the Harris campaign, “While some people may like Trump on the economy, they are not willing to give up their morals and give up American democracy and the Harris campaign is making a heavy play for those voters because of Trump’s extremism.”

He added, “Trump is not winning Latinos on the economy, but yes there are Latino Republicans who vote Republican.”

Still, Mr. Trump surprised in 2020 when he picked up 36 percent support from Latino voters nationally, up from 28 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A recent national New York Times/Siena College poll found that 56 percent of Latinos support Vice President Kamala Harris, while 37 percent back Mr. Trump.

The poll showed that Latino women back Ms. Harris in much higher numbers than Mr. Trump; it also indicated that Mr. Trump’s escalating attacks on immigrants had not driven Latino voters to Ms. Harris. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they believed Mr. Trump was not referring to people like them when he spoke about immigrants. (Half of foreign-born Hispanic voters said the same.)

The survey also indicated a receptiveness to Mr. Trump’s policy stances like building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting immigrants.

Jesus Marquez, a local political consultant and Trump surrogate, said Democrats thought Mr. Trump’s views on the border would hurt him.

“It’s actually resonating with Latinos,” Mr. Marquez said. “Legal Latinos, who are voting and paying taxes, it’s becoming a burden to them. They don’t like the open border situation.”

Latinos make up about 20 percent of the electorate in Nevada and are thus a key swing vote in a swing state. Former President George W. Bush was the last Republican presidential nominee to win Nevada, in his 2004 re-election bid

Support for Mr. Trump’s border stances were evident even among Latino voters who said his anti-immigrant escalations would keep them from voting for him in November.

Tony Muñoz, a former police officer who runs a catering business in Las Vegas, recently visited family in Juarez, Mexico, and said he was shocked by what he saw as a humanitarian disaster at the border, and faulted Democrats and Republicans for failing to manage it.

He has voted for Republicans in the past and would again — just not Mr. Trump.

“The rhetoric that Trump spilled on migrants, I’m not for it,” he said.

“Calling us murderers, rapists and drug dealers. It just hurts me as a Latino. It hurts me as just a person.”

However, Mr. Barajas, who after arriving in the United States fell in love with President Ronald Reagan’s strength and speaking style, separates his own experience as an undocumented immigrant from those that Mr. Trump demonizes.

“I came to work. I used to work two jobs. I didn’t ask the government for any money. I don’t mind people coming to work. They now come to” commit crimes, he said, using the Spanish word. (While Mr. Trump routinely claims falsely that undocumented immigrants are fueling a “migrant crime” wave, national crime statistics do not support that assertion.)

As the clock ticks down to Election Day, both candidates are working hard to win Latino support.

Ms. Harris’s campaign, conscious that the border and the economy are issues that tend to favor Mr. Trump, has focused on conveying to voters that she would be a better, more stable bet on both. Her campaign released an ad in August promising she would hire thousands of more Border Patrol officials and ending with: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”

During a Univision town hall of undecided Latino voters in Las Vegas last week, Ms. Harris was pressed repeatedly on the cost of living and talked up her proposals to tackle price gouging and make housing more affordable.

“The economy is top of mind, like that doesn’t change whether you were born here or you weren’t born here,” said Melissa Morales, the president of Somos Votantes, whose group has about 250 paid canvassers going door-to-door to lift Latino turnout for Ms. Harris and other Democrats in the state.

Last week, Antonio Montes, 22, stood at his front door chatting with a Somos Votantes canvasser in a working-class section of Las Vegas. Mr. Montes, who installs solar panels and doesn’t pay much attention to the election, voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and is leaning toward Ms. Harris.

“I know a lot of people say that, ‘Oh, Donald Trump brought the economy up,’” said Mr. Montes, whose chief issue is the economy as he struggles to keep up on rent. “But in reality, I don’t feel like he really did. I feel like it was the president before him. The policies of the presidency take a while to kick in. So in reality the problems in the economy here could be Donald Trump’s fault.”