Harris Campaign Highlights Urgent Threat Trump Poses to Latino Communities

WASHINGTON — In a poignant display of the ongoing impact of past immigration policies, top advisers to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign held a press conference in Doral, Florida, featuring children who were separated from their parents under the controversial Trump administration policies. The purpose was to highlight the potential consequences of another Trump term for the Latino community.

This press conference occurred just before a Univision town hall meeting where GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was scheduled to engage with undecided Latino voters. Four children shared their harrowing accounts of separation from their parents, emphasizing the trauma inflicted during that period. Full names and ages of the children were not disclosed by the campaign.

As early voting begins in many states and with less than three weeks remaining until the election on Nov. 5, both presidential campaigns are intensifying efforts to win over Latino voters, who represent the second-largest group of eligible voters in the nation. “The Latino vote will decide this election,” stated Democratic Texas U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, who co-chairs the Harris campaign.

According to the Pew Research Center, the race appears tightly contested, with Harris currently leading Trump among Latino voters 57% to 39%. This trend mirrors the 2020 election, in which incumbent Joe Biden garnered 61% of the Latino vote against Trump’s 36%.

Escobar expressed concern about the implications of a second Trump term for the Latino community. She noted that although some Latino voters express support for Trump, they may not fully grasp the danger he poses to their rights and immigration pathways. “He’s not only promised mass deportations but also targets legal immigration avenues,” Escobar remarked.

She specifically pointed to Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump’s immigration policies, who has proposed measures that would affect legal immigration programs. “For Latinos who think Trump’s comments about immigrants don’t apply to them, they should reconsider,” Escobar warned. “He’s talking about you.”

Moreover, she raised alarms about the absence of checks on Trump’s actions in a potential second term, suggesting that policies such as family separation could resurface. During the prior administration, asylum-seeking parents faced severe repercussions, including criminal detention and deportation, leading to the separation of families at the border.

Escobar stated, “These kids have endured horrific trauma, and a second term would bring even greater peril for them. In his first term, there were limits on his power. In a second term, those limitations would vanish.”

While Trump has not explicitly stated whether he would reinstitute family separation, he previously suggested that such policies could deter migration. “When you have that policy, people don’t come. If families are aware they will be separated, they won’t attempt to cross. It may sound harsh, but it’s effective,” he mentioned during a CNN town hall in May 2023.

Escobar expressed her hope that Trump would be directly questioned about the potential reimplementation of family separation during Wednesday’s town hall. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has since initiated a task force focused on reuniting families separated between 2017 and 2021, with approximately 74% of those affected having been reunited. However, nearly 1,000 children remain without connection to their families.