In his rambling acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Thursday night, former President Donald Trump unsurprisingly doubled down on anti-immigrant messaging, saying things like: “You know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”
But throughout the four-day convention, a distinct and disturbing pattern emerged when it came to discussing immigration onstage: First, there’d be someone using violent rhetoric against migrants; then there’d emerge a Latino or Latina Republican to give the party cover. Take, for example, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro, who spoke at the convention hours after being released Wednesday from a Miami federal prison, where he served a sentence for contempt of Congress.
This is what the Republican Party has become in 2024: Rattle the cage with fears of “invasions,” while positioning enough Latinos on stage to say there is nothing to see here.
“Joe and Kamala, they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists,” Navarro said, adding that when Trump called Mexicans “rapists” in 2015, he was viewed as racist. “We read the papers,” Navarro said. “It’s murderers and rapists. Drug cartels. Human traffickers. Terrorists. Chinese spies. And a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens stealing the jobs of Black, brown and blue-collar Americans.”
At the RNC, facts were damned. Despite what Navarro and others said, there is no “migrant crime surge.” But according to Trump and Republicans, migrants are the country’s greatest security threat.
Right after Navarro spoke, Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, took the stage. The juxtaposition was clear. A Latina Republican was there to give permission to the audience — both in the arena and watching from afar — to accept and validate what Navarro had just said.
“I am the proud granddaughter of Mexican farmworkers, who came here with little more than faith in God,” De La Cruz began her remarks. “They never had much money, but they instilled in us strong Texas values. They taught me that through hard work, anything is possible in America.”
“I’m living proof that the American Dream, el sueño americano, can become reality,” De La Cruz added. Later, she claimed that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “say their immigration policies are compassionate, but there is nothing compassionate about open borders. They threaten our national security and flood our country with deadly drugs, killing our precious children. Biden and Harris don’t care about immigrants, They just use them for political gain.”
After Trump was shot Saturday, just two days before the start of the convention, Republicans promised to tone down their violent rhetoric. But clearly an exception was made for migrants, the vast majority of whom come from Latin American countries. As Navarro spoke, for example, convention attendees were waving “Mass Deportation Now!” signs.
This is what the Republican Party has become in 2024: Rattle the cage with fears of “invasions,” while positioning enough Latinos on stage to say there is nothing to see here.
But the anti-immigrant agenda is blatant. See the first two items in the preamble of the official 2024 RNC program: “SEAL THE BORDER AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION” and “CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.”
It should scare us all.
The prospect of millions of people being rounded up and forcefully deported would be yet another dark stain on American history, just like slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment camps or the “Operation Wetback” efforts of the 1950s. A mass deportation plan would be a logistical nightmare and incredibly expensive, too. But this has not and will not detract Republicans, who appear more united on the call to “Send them back!” than on toning down the violent immigration rhetoric. It certainly has not inspired work on a realistic fix to this country’s failed bipartisan plans to finally achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Republicans worked hard during the convention to divide Latinos between those who came into this country “the right way” and those who didn’t. The Trump camp emphasized that theme last year during a controversial Univision interview, an emphasis that proves the “Latino Americans for Trump” rebrand outreach was more than just a change of semantics. Linda Fornos, who said she came to Nevada from Nicaragua 60 years ago and regrets voting for Biden in 2020, proclaimed from the RNC stage that “it’s upsetting to see millions of dollars being sent to help immigrants who came here illegally, while hard-working families who did it the right way are left struggling.” Peruvian American Vanessa Faura said that living under a Biden-Harris administration “feels more and more like I’m back in Latin America.” Faura left Peru when she was 9 years old. A goal of the convention was to convince us that there are enough Republican allies from Latino communities who agree that mass deportation is the only solution. Colombian American Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, made sure he started his remarks by saying, “Many years ago, my parents brought me and my siblings to America legally.” In the eyes of Trump supporters, migrants lack humanity and are “poisoning the blood of our country.” A goal of the convention was to convince us that there are enough Republican allies from Latino communities who agree that mass deportation is the only solution and favor reducing immigration. This week, the White House posted on X that unlawful border crossings “dropped more than 50%.” Biden’s historic announcement to provide a legal pathway to undocumented spouses of American citizens will become reality on Aug. 19, days before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His Covid diagnosis didn’t allow him to promote this game-changing policy at the UnidosUS conference this week, but the DNC has a massive opportunity to present a more accurate picture of what immigrants have done to benefit the United States. They have a duty to put a face to these individuals, who are big drivers in saving the country’s economy and reducing inflation. That narrative will provide a necessary counter to what was a week of straight-up migrant bashing from Republicans.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of "The Latino Newsletter" and co-editor of "Pressing Issues from Free Press." 
