On a Saturday afternoon this spring, about 40 Hispanic Trump supporters waved American flags at the side of Oracle Road in Catalina, Ariz., as cars and motorcycles roared by.
Dressed in red, white and blue, they drew both cheers and middle fingers from passing motorists.
Unfazed, the ebullient MAGA group continued swaying their flags, the ruggedly handsome Catalina mountains in the background.
“I want to support a candidate who cares about the United States, a candidate who continues to preserve the country, which is so great and which many of us love,” said Jorge Rivas, a 57-year-old who owns a restaurant in Catalina.
In this small town, population 6,400, just north of Tucson, Latinos for Donald Trump are making their stand.
They’re not alone.
Discontent with President Biden, Latinos across the country are increasingly willing to look past Trump’s nativist policies and vote for him this November.
They see Trump as someone who will uphold conservative family values, tackle crime and inflation and stop the influx of undocumented migrants crossing the border.
And, after Biden’s abysmal performance in Thursday’s debate, they have little confidence in the 81-year-old president serving another four years.
“The number of times he made mistakes was far beyond my expectations . . . he doesn’t even have the capacity to be the president of a card-playing club. He should be retired, to be calm in his house, not running the most powerful country in the world,” Rivas said. “The Democratic party is abusing the poor man.”
Trump drew limited support from the Latino community in 2016 — just 26% of Hispanic voters nationwide pulled the lever for him that year, according to Pew Research Center.
But, In 2020, 38% of Hispanic voters opted for Trump, and even more expected to do so come November.
According to an April Pew Center poll, 44% of Latinos across the US would vote for Trump in the coming elections compared to 52% for Biden.
A New York Times/Siena poll released in April showed that 46% of Latinos would vote for the former president, versus 40% who would support Biden.
This year, 36.2 million Hispanics are eligible to vote, up from 32.3 million in 2020, per Pew.
“In 2020, we got more votes from Hispanic Americans than any Republican in more than 50 years,” Trump said at a recent event. “In 2024, we’re going to win an even larger share of the Hispanic American vote, setting all-time records for Republicans up and down the ballot.”
Rivas, who hails from El Salvador and is married to a woman from Mexico, doesn’t see a contradiction between being a Hispanic immigrant and supporting Trump, who has deemed immigrants “bad hombres” and rapists.
“He simply uses the wrong words at certain times. I don’t get carried away by the media narrative that automatically defines him as racist,” the naturalized US citizen told The Post. “To what extent do those words cause us harm compared to the policies that the administration of Biden put in place that are really affecting us?”
A life-sized cut out board of Trump greets locals at the entrance of Rivas’ restaurant, Sammy’s Mexican Grill.
The eatery is bedecked in patriotic paraphernalia and pictures of the 45th president.
The menu features a “Trump Burrito” and a “MAGA Burger” with a toothpick flag encouraging diners to vote red.
Rivas sees Biden’s border policy as a huge failure and supports Trump’s hardline approach.
“Many of us immigrants come here because it has been a country of laws, of opportunities, a country that gives us confidence where we can raise our family, without being afraid for our children, where they will have the possibility of being whatever they want to be,” he said.
Rivas is also Catholic, like many Latinos, and he likes Trump’s views on abortion and his support of conservative family values.
Reymundo Torres, president of the Arizona Latino Republican Association, said that his ancestors came from Mexico in 1915, fleeing a revolution caused by left-leaning despots.
Now, he believes it is his duty to fight for his rights, a better economy and a more secure border.
“How you could justify disrespecting our immigration laws, violating our national sovereignty without permission of our nation, crossing our border to infiltrate for whatever reason you may think is necessary. That to me sounds illegitimate,” Torres said. “I’ve lived here in Arizona my entire life. I am a third-generation Arizonan. We don’t experience racism here anywhere near to the degree where you would in liberal cities and towns.”
If Latino Americans like Rivas and Torres are drawing a clear distinction between themselves and those who have recently crossed the border illegally, the Trump campaign is doing the same.
Earlier this month, it rebranded its “Latinos for Trump” outreach as “Latino Americans for Trump” with a rally in Las Vegas.
“We as Latinos want to be treated as what we are. We are already American. This is our country,” said said Jaime Florez, the Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. “We came here to stay, we came here to pursue our American dream, we have our families here, and we have our future in the United States . . . Trump gave us the opportunity to feel more united with the idea of working together to make America great again.”
In 2020, Biden won Nevada, and this year it’s considered a key battleground state.
Those on the ground say they’re seeing a greater openness to Trump amongst the Hispanic population in the state, who tend to be working class and are struggling in the current economy.
“It’s easier for me to go out there and convince Latinos to support Donald Trump as opposed to back in 2016 when I was getting death threats,” said Jesus Marquez, a Las Vegas Republican activist who worked on the 2016 and 2020 campaign. “I would be attacked on my social media, because I was openly in favor of Donald Trump.”
After 2020’s defeat, they learned their lesson, he said.
Now they are doing ballot harvesting, which is legal in Nevada, just like the Democrats.
“We have a better chance of winning now than we did in 2020,” Marquez said. “The situation in the country we have is a total mess, we have inflation, everything is so high, so that that is costing regular folks their American dream.”
In Florida, the Cuban-American population has long veered red and Trump has a wide lead going into November. A poll issued in April by Florida Atlantic University and Mainstreet Research shows Trump with a comfortable eight-percent-point lead over Biden in the state, with Trump leading by 13.1 percentage points among Latinos.
“It’s Trump’s land,” said Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia, who is also the national head of Latino Americans for Trump.
Back in Catalina, Viridiana Aguirre Gonzalez, 41 and a local homemaker originally from Mexico, said that she plans to vote for Trump.
Though an immigrant herself, she agrees with Trump on immigration issues, saying that migrants should follow immigration laws and come to the US legally.
“We have to be realistic. Some are coming here fleeing something. There is no control on the border to stop this. There have been some delinquents,” the naturalized US citizen said in Spanish, adding she knew of a young immigrant woman who was raped by other migrants as she crossed the border.
“She had her life destroyed. Others think we are racists. That is not true. We want the well-being of the country, we want them to follow the constitution,” she said. “I want peace.”
She added, “Trump is like a medicine. He is the cure.”
