This is an occasional roundup of people who voted for Donald Trump and are shocked to find out no one is immune from the damage and pain he causes. Many are now grappling with the consequences of their choice as it affects them and their loved ones—and possibly regretting their vote.
NBC News went to Miami’s Republican strongholds—Cuban and Nicaraguan communities—and found something remarkable: Trump supporters realizing they’ve been used.
“What did you think was going to happen when Trump won?” NBC News reporter Morgan Radford asked one immigrant at a Texas ICE detention facility, in a phone interview. He believed Trump when he said “he was going to deport criminals,” Radford translated.
While he couldn’t vote, obviously, his whole family did the honors. His wife says on camera, “They used us.”
No shit.
Everyone paying attention heard Trump loud and clear. To him, every brown immigrant is a criminal. Legal status doesn’t matter. The Marshall Project documented thousands of instances where Trump linked immigrants to crime, and it literally started on Day One, when he said, during his campaign kickoff, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
They held these signs up at their convention:
And at his rallies:
See anything there that exempts non-criminal immigrants? Because I sure as hell don’t. The message has always been crystal clear. But we’ve seen this delusion play out time and time again.
“Erika Gonzalez, who manages a nearby barbershop with her husband, voted for Mr. Trump because she liked his tough immigration policy. Born in the U.S. to Mexican parents, she’s concerned about the strain put on public services in Chicago by large numbers of new migrants from Venezuela under President Biden,” the Christian Science Monitor reported. “‘There are a lot of people who come to the USA to work, to have a better life. People follow the rules, pay taxes,’ she says. ‘Some people have been here 30 years. They have their own house, they have a small business. … What’s going to happen to them?’”
Yeah, Erika, what’s going to happen to them because of your vote?
“I thought they were going to be targeting criminals,” Trump supporter Estefany Peña told CalMatters. “‘No one mentioned during the campaigning of Donald Trump that residents … legal residents … were going to have to go through this,’ she said. Her husband, who came to the country legally in 1999 and has a green card, went to an immigration office in San Francisco for a check-in in late January and still hasn’t come home, she said.”
Except we did mention it. Repeatedly. But you didn’t care. You thought your family would be safe. You were fine with Trump hurting other people—as long as they weren’t your people. You just assumed the cruelty wouldn’t reach you.
In 2020, Biden won Latinos by a healthy 2-to-1 margin, 65-32. In 2024, Harris scraped by with 51-46. As a Latino, I find it unfathomable that so many of my people turned toward a man who’s made bashing Latinos the defining feature of his political career—from the moment he came down that golden escalator to his final screamfest at Madison Square Garden.
Related | Here’s how Republicans made the Puerto Rico ‘garbage’ slur even worse
And now? Of course they feel used. Because they were used. Trump doesn’t respect anyone, and certainly not anyone brown. He’s probably laughing his ass off at how easy it was to manipulate them into voting against their own families.
He told us exactly who he was. They just didn’t believe it meant them.
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