Here's what Milwaukee immigrants are saying about GOP immigration rhetoric at the RNC

MILWAUKEE – Lizeth Zorrilla-Sanchez turned down a request to set up as a vendor at the Republican National Convention.

She owns La Finca Coffeehouse, a family business she founded with her sister in a Milwaukee suburb six miles south of where thousands of Republicans gathered earlier this week to nominate Donald Trump for a return to the White House as president.

“(I) didn't feel 100% comfortable, because that's not the political stance that I feel any sense of pride in,” she said.

Saying no to that request wasn't easy. Her parents brought Zorrilla-Sanchez and her sister from Mexico to Milwaukee nearly three decades ago.

Zorrilla-Sanchez grew up undocumented. She was part of the youth movement that championed the creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012. The Obama-era program gave her and other young immigrants a way to stay in the country.

Last year, she became a U.S. citizen in what she described as a bittersweet moment.  

“I didn't invite my family to that because they don't have access to that yet,” she said. “At the end of the day, it's not enough for a whole complete family to stay here, you know?”

In November, Zorrilla-Sanchez will cast a ballot for the first time ever as an American citizen, an opportunity that she said makes her feel excited and nervous at the same time.  

The 2024 road to the White House for Democrats and Republicans goes through voters such as Zorrilla-Sanchez in crucial swing states such as Wisconsin.

She’s one of 214,000 Latinos in Wisconsin, and 36.2 million nationwide, whose votes are up for grabs.

Latinos are more likely to come from mixed-status families, and have relatives living without legal status in the United States.

Republicans and Democrats in the coming weeks will polish their pitches to win those voters.

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the GOP pitch came with a catch.

On one hand, Republicans championed legal immigration. Several speakers touted their immigrant backgrounds, and even former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — the daughter of Indian immigrants and a former Trump rival — made the case for Republicans to widen their tent.

But central to the Republican strategy to return Trump to the White House is criticizing President Joe Biden’s border policies, denouncing migrants as criminals and rapists, and highlighting cases of crimes they’ve committed over the past four years.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned in his speech of an invasion, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake led chants of “build the wall.” Organizers handed out signs at the convention calling for “Mass deportations now.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans touted themselves as a last line of defense against “catastrophic” illegal immigration and led chants to “send them back.”

Tom Homan, the Trump administration's acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, drove that message home on Wednesday.

“As a guy who spent 34 years deporting illegal aliens, I got a message for the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden released into our country in violation of federal law: you better start packing now,” he said. “You’re damn right, because you’re going home.”

Biden a disappointment to some immigrants

Inside her quinceañera shop full of frilly gowns of all colors and sizes in Milwaukee’s predominantly Latino southside neighborhood, Virginia Leon considered how she will vote.

She’s a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Milwaukee for 33 years and has run her store for more than two decades. She’s a naturalized citizen and has voted in the last few presidential elections. She considers voting her civic duty as a new American.

In 2020, Leon voted for Biden because she said she was turned off by Trump’s attacks on migrants as criminals and rapists.

Four years later, she feels disappointed, she said.

“I thought there would be more improvements, more changes, but I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s so much lacking during this presidency.”

Leon said despite his rhetoric, the economy was better under Trump, she said, and that made her consider the possibility of voting for him. But seeing him incite the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and defending white nationalists made her second-guess that.

Still, she’s not happy with Biden as her other choice. Leon is concerned about his age and said that as a business owner she’s not happy to see Biden provide government handouts to more recent arrivals. She argues that it diminishes their incentive to work.

Leon recalled recently paying for her groceries at the checkout counter. She offered three recently arrived young men to let them use her grocery store app so they could get better deals on their purchases.

“’We don’t need them,’ they told me. ‘We get food stamps,’ almost $800 a month in stamps for three people. 'We don’t need coupons or anything.' … I don’t think it’s fair,” she said.

Leon contrasted that to the difficulties she experienced keeping her business open during the pandemic, when many of her neighbors shut down. She credited her loyal customer base for helping her survive.

Republicans are hoping to capitalize on those sorts of situations, arguing that Trump will do more for their families and their pocketbooks. At the convention, Republicans claimed that Biden prioritized recently arrived immigrants over U.S. citizens.

Dr. Sergio González is an assistant professor at Marquette University specializing in Latino labor and migration to the Wisconsin and the Midwest. He said that message is just as likely to resonate among established immigrants and first-generation Latinos as it does with citizens whose families have lived in the country for generations.

“I would say and I think many immigration historians would say in the United States that part of the assimilation process for immigrants in this country is to learn how to be anti-immigrant,” González said.

González emphasized that, as with other racial and ethnic groups, the most pressing issues for Latinos at the ballot box is not immigration, but the economy.

In states such as Wisconsin, immigrants play vital roles in industries and agriculture. The fastest growing Latino populations are in rural parts of the state such as Waupaca or Arcadia, far from the urban centers in Milwaukee or Madison, he said.

As those Latino communities mature and become politically engaged, González said, they historically continue to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. That may not change this year in what he expects to be a turnout election.

“It's not so much the rising number of Republican Latinos,” González said. "I think the larger question is the diminishing number of energized, Democratic Latinos that are actually going to turn out to vote.”

Leon said she will certainly vote in November, even if she hasn't decided on a candidate. While she supports stricter border controls, she’s against mass deportations, especially if the government goes after hard-working immigrants who, like her, want to contribute to this country.

Leon is proud of what she has accomplished so far. Earlier this year, she earned her social work degree, becoming the first of her 18 siblings to graduate from college. Now she’s looking into selling her shop before transitioning to a new career.

What immigrants are saying about the 2024 election

Back at La Finca Coffeehouse, Armando Alcazar reflected on what a second Trump term would mean for him and his family.

Though he has lived in Milwaukee most of his life, he doesn’t have legal status. He’s a DACA recipient, which grants him protection from deportation and a work permit. The program’s future — and his ability to live in the country without the fear of deportation — is under litigation in federal court.

“I'm a business owner, too. I own a tabletop game store and that's my livelihood. I worked my entire life to get to the point where I could own something ... that is successful,” he said.

The last time Trump was president, he attempted to overturn the DACA program. After Saturday’s assassination attempt and Biden's reelection challenges, he believes Trump is likely headed to White House again.

If that happens, he wonders what he should do. Does he sell his business? Does he return to Mexico? He identifies with the far left and was excited to see Mexico elect a female president who supports socialist policies.

“I moved here when I was three years old. I've only known the United States as a country that I could feasibly call my country,” Alcazar said. “But the entire time, the country has been telling me I don't belong here.”

Still, he expects he'd feel like a foreigner in Mexico, too, even if he was born there. And his 15-year-old daughter, who was born in Milwaukee, would likely struggle the most if they were to leave.

Zorilla-Sanchez, the coffeeshop owner, said she will consider her family when she casts her ballot for the first time in November.

“It's so hard because, especially from a business-owner perspective, it's like, are you going to go the route of fiscal responsibility or are you going to go the route of ... humanity?” she questioned. “And 100 percent, I'm advocating for my family. I'm going to choose a candidate that decides what's right for us as a whole, to be able to continue to thrive in this country."

That candidate, she said, is not Donald Trump.