Thread: Anti-immigration advocates thrilled with Trump's win

Anti-immigration advocates thrilled with Trump's win

Nov. 21, 2016
Updated Nov. 22, 2016 11:46 a.m.


Anti-illegal immigrant activists with the We The People, California's Crusader group, contrasts views with those of pro immigration reform advocates rallying at right during a march in 2013. Today, many people opposed to illegal immigration plan to hold the Trump administration to his promise to deport undocumented immigrants. (File photo by H. Lorren Au Jr., Orange County Register/SCNG)

For the last two weeks, as Americans processed Donald Trump’s upset victory in the presidential race, the banner leading the Minuteman Project’s website has been unequivocally triumphant:

“Trump Wins! Minuteman Project Mission Accomplished!”

Founded in the mid-2000s by Orange County resident Jim Gilchrist, the Minuteman organization once was synonymous with the idea of so-called hard-line opposition to illegal immigration. Gilchrist and, later, others, urged fellow citizens to patrol the border to block people from crossing, even as they espoused swift expulsion of all undocumented immigrants from the United States.

Those views once were viewed as extreme. Today, they’re a key force in the rise of Trump.

“We planted the seed in people’s minds that the rule of law was at risk,” Gilchrist said last week at a Laguna Niguel coffee bar.

“And people decided that they wanted something different.”
Gilchrist’s views aren’t rare. Many in the anti-illegal immigration movement – a push that has been waning in California since the mid-1990s – view Trump’s election as the culmination of a long, sometimes lonely, fight against what they see as a crisis of unchecked immigration, both legal and illegal.

In Trump, they found a champion who made their cause the central message of his campaign.

“When we started, I really thought that we might have a president who believed they would enforce immigration laws, but then I began to doubt it,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., that seeks to reduce immigration levels.

“So I was shocked that Trump won; I would say that we are pleasantly surprised.”

NOT CLOSE TO HOME

Trump’s immigration plans – and the views of his supporters – could face stiff resistance in places like Orange County, Los Angeles and Riverside.

Hillary Clinton carried California nearly 2-1, and the state is a key reason why she won the popular vote by, at last count, at least 1.3 million Americans. Even Orange County, once viewed as reflexively Republican and the birthplace for many anti-immigrant efforts, picked Clinton over Trump by five points.

Polls consistently show that California voters hold more liberal views on immigration than the rest of the country, and overwhelmingly oppose the hard-line measures proposed by Trump. According to a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey taken in March, more than three-quarters of California voters think immigrants already living in the U.S. should be allowed to stay, and 65 percent think they should be given a pathway to citizenship. The poll also showed that

Californians overwhelmingly oppose a border wall.

But some local anti-illegal immigration activists believe that could change.

Trump’s victory has reinvigorated their movement, they say, and at least some feel personally vindicated by Trump’s success.

“Nobody wanted to talk about this, and nobody wanted to hear us,” said Anaheim resident Elaine Proko. “We were not politically correct.”

A veteran anti-illegal immigration activist, Proko was a founding member of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, an Orange County-based group that orchestrated the 1994 passage for Proposition 187, a measure that would have cut off public services to undocumented immigrants living in the state.

“Trump is so important to us because he’s doing all the things that we tried for so long to do,” Proko said.

“The whole movement is excited about it.”

That excitement could spark a rise in anti-immigrant action.

Robin Hvidston, executive director of Claremont-based We the People Rising, said Trump’s rise has revived activism among those who would expel undocumented immigrants.

Hvidston said both We The People Rising and another group she works with, The Remembrance Project, a Texas nonprofit that “advocates for families whose loved ones were killed by illegal aliens,” have seen an uptick in membership in the past year, as Trump campaigned nationally.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES

The next step is action, probably on both sides of the debate.

Hvidston said her organizations and others will focus on making sure that Trump follows through on his promises to ramp up deportations and crack down on security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She was encouraged by the president-elect’s statements on “60 Minutes” on Nov. 13, in which he said that his administration would prioritize deportations of immigrants with criminal records. He estimated that between 2 and 3 million people fall under that category.

But that goal could be tough to achieve. The Obama administration deported 2.5 million immigrants over eight years, and reduced the overall number of undocumented immigrants in the United States. What’s more, Trump described the 3 million people he wants out as “criminals.” Studies suggest about 300,000 of the estimated 11.5 million people living in the United States illegally have felony records, a lower ratio than American citizens.

Still, Hvidston says anti-illegal immigrant activists are already planning what she called a “citizen lobbying push” designed to bombard Trump and members of Congress with phone calls, emails, and social media posts calling for action on the immigration issue.

“Once he takes office, we will definitely be observing, watching to see if he follows through,” she said.

Leo Chavez, a professor of anthropology at UC Irvine who has studied anti-illegal immigration and anti-Latino movements, said it’s natural for activists to feel emboldened by Trump’s popularity.

But he questioned how much headway the movement would be able to make in a state like California, where elected officials have resisted the federal government on immigration before, and seem poised to do it again under Trump.

“California is the first in lots of things,” Chavez said.

“We were first to push the anti-immigrant rhetoric that we’re now seeing in other states like Arizona and Texas, and parts of the South. Now it seems like we’re going to be the trendsetters in the resistance to mass deportations.”

AWAKE

Sitting in the Laguna Niguel Starbucks where Gilchrist spends most mornings, it is hard to imagine that the 67-year-old retiree in a Richard-Nixon-meets-Elvis T-shirt once commanded a band of citizen border vigilantes.

Gilchrist readily admits that his group is in “hibernation,” damaged by years of infighting and by accusations of zealotry and racism by the Minuteman Project’s detractors.

Now, Gilchrist said, he is ready to cede the issue of border security back to the government, under incoming President Trump.

“I’ve done what I set out to do,” Gilchrist said.

“Now, I think the movement can probably can stand down to see what the president-elect will do.”

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/t...tion-anti.html

Gilchrist readily admits that his group is in “hibernation,”

What a liar! While the Minuteman Project has done nothing of substance for more than 8 years, their fund raising machine took in 1.6 million dollars last year away from concerned American citizens that want secure borders!

W