An impossible dream? Democrats try to connect with Trump voters

Reuters

By Susan Cornwell and James Oliphant

April 26, 2018

An impossible dream? Democrats try to connect with Trump voters

Paul Davis has a simple formula for winning over President Donald Trump’s supporters in his Kansas race for Congress: He talks about kitchen table issues, like prescription drug prices and farm tariffs. And he is in no hurry to announce he’s a Democrat.

Davis and other party moderates believe that neglected rural and working-class voters in Midwestern districts helped cost Democrats the 2016 election. Trump won, they note, with strong support from socially conservative voters in Midwestern states, including many who used to vote Democratic.

“Democrats, nationally, have not had a message or policies that have really connected with Midwestern voters, and that’s why we have lost elections here in recent years,” said Davis, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the House of Representatives in Kansas’ second district.

Now Davis and other moderate Democrats are trying to woo those voters back, and the party’s hopes in the November election could rest on their success.

The battle for the House of Representatives is increasingly focused on places like Kansas’ second, which includes the state capital Topeka and the university town of Lawrence but also large wheat and soybean farms. Democrats will likely have to take some Republican-leaning districts like this one to recapture the house, and doing so will require winning over Trump voters

Interviews with about 20 Democratic lawmakers, candidates, strategists and campaign volunteers found that a growing number of Democrats are trying to do just that.

But calls to woo Trump supporters are not sitting well with some party loyalists.

Liberals say the party needs to stick to its core values on issues such as abortion, immigration, gun control and gay rights. They say outreach to Trump voters risks wasting precious campaign resources needed to keep core supporters fired up and determined to vote in November.

Avis Jones-DeWeever, an African-American activist, says that courting Trump supporters is like chasing “fool’s gold” and worries her party is “obsessed” with bringing them back into the fold.

“It’s a completely boneheaded strategy,” she said. “It’s a waste of time, money and energy to try to convince the inconvincible.”

‘CULTURAL POPULARITY CONTEST’

Democratic Representative Cheri Bustos knows Trump country well.

The president won in her northwestern Illinois district in 2016, but Bustos also cruised to victory there, the best showing nationwide by a Democrat in a district that went for Trump.

Afterward, Bustos wrote a report detailing how Democrats can win in the U.S. heartland.

She sent the 50-page paper to every Midwestern Democratic candidate, but it attracted little notice by party leaders until moderate Democrat Conor Lamb’s upset victory in a Pennsylvania special election in March.

The day of Lamb’s election, Steny Hoyer, the House’s second-ranking Democrat, walked into a meeting of congressional candidates waving a copy of Bustos’ report.

“I urged them to read it,” Hoyer said.

The report suggests the party take a “big tent” approach and become more inclusive of candidates who personally oppose abortion or support gun rights, arguing that Democrats are losing the “cultural popularity contest” with rural voters.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, a group that advocates for abortion rights, warns that ambiguity on the subject could upset the Democratic base. “Equivocating on support for these issues will be felt among critical voters and sends a message that Democrats would allow fundamental human rights to be undermined just to win a race or two,” said Ilyse Hogue, NARAL’s president.

Quentin James, co-founder of The Collective PAC, which aims to elect more African-Americans to Congress, worries that courting white moderates will come at the expense of more liberal black candidates and says Democrats should not alter their message to chase after a relatively small pool of rural voters.

But Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat campaigning for re-election this year, said progressive candidates have little hope of winning in states like his.

“You’re not going to find a liberal Democrat that usually wins in those areas,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, chairman of the moderate “Blue Dog” coalition in the House, agrees candidates should fit their districts. “One size doesn’t fit all for Democrats,” he said. The Blue Dogs have partnered with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to identify and recruit candidates for the first time since 2006.

WORKING WITH TRUMP

Davis knows he is fighting an uphill battle.

The Republican-leaning district in which he is running went for Trump by a margin of 19 percentage points in 2016. The district’s current representative, Republican Lynn Jenkins, took 61% of the vote in 2016, but she is retiring, leaving an open seat that some analysts see as flippable by the right candidate.

On a recent campaign outing, Davis generally did not tell voters in the district that he was a Democrat unless asked, and some of his campaign flyers did not mention his party.

Instead, he talked about education or jobs, downplayed hot-button cultural issues and avoided Trump-bashing. He does not believe in banning any classes of guns, and has said he won’t support Nancy Pelosi as the Democrat’s House leader if elected.

Roaming the floor at a barbecue competition earlier this month, Davis pressed the flesh and chatted about the unseasonably cold weather – and his support for better education funding. He also handed out his card.

“It doesn’t get you free fries or anything,” he joked.

“I’m sure the vast, vast majority of people in that room were Republicans,” Davis, a former state representative, said after the event. “I don’t think I am going to be able to succeed if people don’t see that I listen to their concerns.”

Davis supports abortion rights, but that is not at the heart of his message to voters. Instead, he talks about the suffering farm economy and how looming Chinese tariffs in response to Trump’s protectionist push on trade could make things worse.

He says, however, he could work with Trump “if the president is doing things that I believe are good for Kansas and good for America.”

Kansas state Senator Steve Fitzgerald, one of several Republicans vying to win that party’s primary in Kansas’ second, doubts whether voters will be persuaded by Davis’ attempts to distinguish himself from the national Democratic Party.

“He’s running that way because that’s the only way he could possibly win,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s not running as a Democrat.”

‘I’M A DEMOCRAT’

In rural Kansas and other regions that backed Trump, the word “Democrat” is often a euphemism for out-of-touch, condescending coastal elites

To retake the House, the party will have to battle that stereotype in key House races not just in Kansas, but in Iowa, Minnesota and other states in which older, white voters are likely to be a deciding factor.

Trump: Cohen handled ‘crazy’ Stormy Daniels deal

A Reuters analysis of nearly 40 competitive House races showed that more than two-thirds are at least 75 percent white, and about half voted for Trump.

Davis knows that his party affiliation can be toxic. While going door-to-door in Topeka recently, he approached Jim Robinson, 56, who was pulling into his driveway in his truck.

Davis handed Robinson a flyer, and Robinson immediately asked if Davis was a Republican.

“I’m a Democrat,” Davis said.

Robinson handed him back his flyer. “Okay, then, I’m sorry … Have a good day, sir.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

Officer accused of transporting immigrants in US illegally

AP (California)

April 26, 2018

Officer accused of transporting immigrants in US illegally

A Los Angeles Police Department officer has been charged with attempting to transport two people in the country illegally through an immigration checkpoint in Southern California.

A federal court filing Wednesday says Mambasse Koulabalo Patara was arrested this week at a San Diego County checkpoint about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of the border with Mexico. It wasn’t immediately known if he has an attorney.

The complaint says Patara had two people in his car and appeared nervous when questioned. The documents say Patara was taken into custody after his passengers admitted they are not U.S. citizens.

The filing says Patara, who was off-duty, showed his LAPD identification and had his service weapon inside the vehicle.

His passengers were detained by Border Patrol officers.

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

After Arduous Journey, Migrants See Stubborn Obstacle: Trump

New York Times

By Kirk Semple

April 26, 2018

After Arduous Journey, Migrants See Stubborn Obstacle: Trump

The uncomfortable and dangerous rides atop freight trains are now in the past. So are the cold nights sleeping in parks, the hot days walking in the unforgiving sun and the unpredictability of the next meal or bath.

Yet for hundreds of migrants who arrived in this border city this week after a month traveling en masse across Mexico, perhaps the hardest part is to come. The hope of sanctuary in the United States had sustained them throughout the trip, and, for many, one person now stood in the way: the president of the United States.

“He doesn’t want anyone to enter,” said José Ignacio Villatoro, 20, who said he fled gang violence in Guatemala with his parents and three siblings. Mr. Villatoro was standing within sight of the border fence this week, weighing what he had been through and the effort that is still required.

“I’m thinking about how to enter because it’s not at all easy,” he said, looking at his shoes. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

This has now become the defining challenge of the migrant caravan.

The group is planning to walk en masse on Sunday to the border crossing leading to southern San Diego, with those planning to petition for asylum presenting themselves to American border officials and making their case for sanctuary.

Irma Rivera, 31 of Honduras, being awakened by her 4-year-old son, Jesus Eduardo, at a shelter in Tijuana. Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

The caravan’s push north began on March 25 in Tapachula, a city on Mexico’s border with Guatemala. These group migrations have become something of an annual event in Mexico, intended to provide security-in-numbers for participants and draw attention to the migrants’ plight.

The participants, the vast majority fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, numbered upward of 1,200 in the initial stages of the journey, perhaps the largest group on record. Still, the caravan might have passed mostly unnoticed, like those in the past, had President Trump not caught wind of it.

Mr. Trump posted tweet after tweet on the subject, portraying the caravan as a danger to the United States and evidence of lax immigration enforcement in Mexico. He used it as grounds to deploy National Guard troops to the southwest border.

This week, as the caravan neared the northern border of Mexico, the Trump administration ordered additional judges, prosecutors and asylum officers to staff precincts on the United States’ southwest border ahead of its arrival.

Mr. Trump mobilized his Cabinet as well, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system,” and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen issuing two statements, the latest on Wednesday, threatening prosecution for anyone who illegally entered the United States or made “a false immigration claim.”

Mr. Trump’s comments have filtered down to the caravan by way of relatives’ phone messages and word-of-mouth, and via the reporters who have descended from time to time.

“The person in power decides things,” said Plutarco Libni Vásquez, 29, who traveled from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with his partner, Orfa Marín, and her three children. “We are just simple workers who want to get ahead.”

The family members said they were fleeing violence in their homeland, their lives having been touched by extortion and a gang’s threats of rape and murder, among other traumas.

But they guarded the details of their wounds. Lawyers who met with members of the group in the city of Puebla earlier in their migration counseled them not to publicly discuss their cases so as not to inadvertently contradict themselves when they spoke with American border authorities.

More than 300 people were expected to have arrived in Tijuana by the end of Thursday. Another 300 or so were in the northern city of Hermosillo, organizers said, and many of them planned to seek protection in Mexico.

In Tijuana, the migrants have squeezed into two shelters in a scrappy neighborhood wedged between the city’s red-light district and the United States border.

With only a few possessions stuffed in battered knapsacks and plastic bags, they have bedded down on blankets on the tile floors of one shelter, and in tents pitched on a cement floor of another. The nights have been cold, and flulike illness has circulated for weeks. State health authorities in Sonora diagnosed four people with tuberculosis, according to officials here in Baja California.

The location of the Tijuana shelters has made the migrants’ yearning even more intense. From the sidewalk in front of one shelter, the migrants can see the steel border fence and the United States beyond.

Organizers say they never expected this many caravan participants to make it so far together. They had predicted that the vast majority would drop out along the way, and even announced at one point that the caravan would officially dissolve in Mexico City. But Mr. Trump’s efforts to break it up may actually have created the opposite outcome.

Organizers expect that many, if not most, of the remaining caravan participants would apply for asylum. And over the next two days, organizers plan to hold know-your-rights workshops and schedule one-on-one conferences between migrants and volunteer lawyers and paralegals from the United States.

Gaining asylum in the United States has never been easy. Applicants must prove they have been persecuted or fear persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political belief or membership in a particular group.

By law, people who request protection at a United States entry point must first be referred for a screening, known as a credible-fear interview, with an asylum officer. If the officer finds that an applicant has a chance of proving fear of persecution back home, the person can apply for asylum before a judge.

In recent years, judges have approved fewer than half of all asylum requests. Among Central American petitioners, the approval rate is substantially lower.

Orfa Marin, 33, with her son Byron Garcia, 15, and daughter Rachel Garcia, 7, in Tijuana on Thursday. The family members are fleeing violence in their home country, Honduras. Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

This month, the Trump administration announced a new push for legislation that would make it more difficult to obtain refuge. Mr. Trump has said that overly permissive laws have drawn a flood of migrants to the nation’s borders.

The president’s aggressive approach to the caravan appears to have worn down the resolve of some members.

Several people in Tijuana, even after having traveled so far, wondered aloud about the wisdom of applying for asylum, considering the possibility that they could be detained and separated from their children for a prolonged period while their cases were pending.

Fathers were considering letting their families go on without them in the belief that the American authorities might look more kindly on women and children than on men.

“I’m so scared,” said Daisy Guardado, 40, who fled Honduras with her three daughters after a gang attacked one and killed her brother. Her three sons remain in Honduras, in hiding.

Lawyers have told her she has a solid case for protection in the United States, yet Mr. Trump’s statements have rattled her. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Still, most planned to press on with their asylum cases.

Ignacio Villatoro, José Villatoro’s father, said he thought his family had a persuasive case. Facing a gang’s extortion threats, the family had closed their bakery in Coatepeque, Guatemala, and fled.

“If Trump allows his heart to open,” Mr. Villatoro said, “my wife and kids will have a chance to cross.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

After Arduous Journey, Migrants See Stubborn Obstacle: Trump

New York Times

By Kirk Semple

April 26, 2018

After Arduous Journey, Migrants See Stubborn Obstacle: Trump

The uncomfortable and dangerous rides atop freight trains are now in the past. So are the cold nights sleeping in parks, the hot days walking in the unforgiving sun and the unpredictability of the next meal or bath.

Yet for hundreds of migrants who arrived in this border city this week after a month traveling en masse across Mexico, perhaps the hardest part is to come. The hope of sanctuary in the United States had sustained them throughout the trip, and, for many, one person now stood in the way: the president of the United States.

“He doesn’t want anyone to enter,” said José Ignacio Villatoro, 20, who said he fled gang violence in Guatemala with his parents and three siblings. Mr. Villatoro was standing within sight of the border fence this week, weighing what he had been through and the effort that is still required.

“I’m thinking about how to enter because it’s not at all easy,” he said, looking at his shoes. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

This has now become the defining challenge of the migrant caravan.

The group is planning to walk en masse on Sunday to the border crossing leading to southern San Diego, with those planning to petition for asylum presenting themselves to American border officials and making their case for sanctuary.

Irma Rivera, 31 of Honduras, being awakened by her 4-year-old son, Jesus Eduardo, at a shelter in Tijuana. Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

The caravan’s push north began on March 25 in Tapachula, a city on Mexico’s border with Guatemala. These group migrations have become something of an annual event in Mexico, intended to provide security-in-numbers for participants and draw attention to the migrants’ plight.

The participants, the vast majority fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, numbered upward of 1,200 in the initial stages of the journey, perhaps the largest group on record. Still, the caravan might have passed mostly unnoticed, like those in the past, had President Trump not caught wind of it.

Mr. Trump posted tweet after tweet on the subject, portraying the caravan as a danger to the United States and evidence of lax immigration enforcement in Mexico. He used it as grounds to deploy National Guard troops to the southwest border.

This week, as the caravan neared the northern border of Mexico, the Trump administration ordered additional judges, prosecutors and asylum officers to staff precincts on the United States’ southwest border ahead of its arrival.

Mr. Trump mobilized his Cabinet as well, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system,” and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen issuing two statements, the latest on Wednesday, threatening prosecution for anyone who illegally entered the United States or made “a false immigration claim.”

Mr. Trump’s comments have filtered down to the caravan by way of relatives’ phone messages and word-of-mouth, and via the reporters who have descended from time to time.

“The person in power decides things,” said Plutarco Libni Vásquez, 29, who traveled from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with his partner, Orfa Marín, and her three children. “We are just simple workers who want to get ahead.”

The family members said they were fleeing violence in their homeland, their lives having been touched by extortion and a gang’s threats of rape and murder, among other traumas.

But they guarded the details of their wounds. Lawyers who met with members of the group in the city of Puebla earlier in their migration counseled them not to publicly discuss their cases so as not to inadvertently contradict themselves when they spoke with American border authorities.

More than 300 people were expected to have arrived in Tijuana by the end of Thursday. Another 300 or so were in the northern city of Hermosillo, organizers said, and many of them planned to seek protection in Mexico.

In Tijuana, the migrants have squeezed into two shelters in a scrappy neighborhood wedged between the city’s red-light district and the United States border.

With only a few possessions stuffed in battered knapsacks and plastic bags, they have bedded down on blankets on the tile floors of one shelter, and in tents pitched on a cement floor of another. The nights have been cold, and flulike illness has circulated for weeks. State health authorities in Sonora diagnosed four people with tuberculosis, according to officials here in Baja California.

The location of the Tijuana shelters has made the migrants’ yearning even more intense. From the sidewalk in front of one shelter, the migrants can see the steel border fence and the United States beyond.

Organizers say they never expected this many caravan participants to make it so far together. They had predicted that the vast majority would drop out along the way, and even announced at one point that the caravan would officially dissolve in Mexico City. But Mr. Trump’s efforts to break it up may actually have created the opposite outcome.

Organizers expect that many, if not most, of the remaining caravan participants would apply for asylum. And over the next two days, organizers plan to hold know-your-rights workshops and schedule one-on-one conferences between migrants and volunteer lawyers and paralegals from the United States.

Gaining asylum in the United States has never been easy. Applicants must prove they have been persecuted or fear persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political belief or membership in a particular group.

By law, people who request protection at a United States entry point must first be referred for a screening, known as a credible-fear interview, with an asylum officer. If the officer finds that an applicant has a chance of proving fear of persecution back home, the person can apply for asylum before a judge.

In recent years, judges have approved fewer than half of all asylum requests. Among Central American petitioners, the approval rate is substantially lower.

Orfa Marin, 33, with her son Byron Garcia, 15, and daughter Rachel Garcia, 7, in Tijuana on Thursday. The family members are fleeing violence in their home country, Honduras. Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

This month, the Trump administration announced a new push for legislation that would make it more difficult to obtain refuge. Mr. Trump has said that overly permissive laws have drawn a flood of migrants to the nation’s borders.

The president’s aggressive approach to the caravan appears to have worn down the resolve of some members.

Several people in Tijuana, even after having traveled so far, wondered aloud about the wisdom of applying for asylum, considering the possibility that they could be detained and separated from their children for a prolonged period while their cases were pending.

Fathers were considering letting their families go on without them in the belief that the American authorities might look more kindly on women and children than on men.

“I’m so scared,” said Daisy Guardado, 40, who fled Honduras with her three daughters after a gang attacked one and killed her brother. Her three sons remain in Honduras, in hiding.

Lawyers have told her she has a solid case for protection in the United States, yet Mr. Trump’s statements have rattled her. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Still, most planned to press on with their asylum cases.

Ignacio Villatoro, José Villatoro’s father, said he thought his family had a persuasive case. Facing a gang’s extortion threats, the family had closed their bakery in Coatepeque, Guatemala, and fled.

“If Trump allows his heart to open,” Mr. Villatoro said, “my wife and kids will have a chance to cross.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com