Austin's Latino male immigrant workers who supported Trump "it's been a disaster." [View all]

Last November, on the day after Donald Trump’s resounding electoral triumph, the American-Statesman visited an Austin Home Depot and found, among the day laborers waiting for work that day, a relative sense of optimism about the Republican president-elect.

A year later, on a similar morning at the same Home Depot, fewer men were waiting for work — and enthusiasm had dried up. 

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Hector, 46, who is originally from Honduras. “I was in agreement with a lot of what Trump had to say. But now, it’s a war on immigrants, especially Hispanics.

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Yet perhaps the deeper betrayal, they said, has been the spiraling sense of economic uncertainty during the past year, with less work, stagnant wages and rising costs for food and housing. The unease is not new, but it has deepened

“We said, ‘At least [the economy] is going to get better,’” said Jose Luis, 63, a Mexican immigrant who has worked as a day laborer for about 15 years. “But it’s been a disaster.”




Austin’s immigrant workers say Trump’s economy has left them behind https://www.statesman.com/news/local/article/austin-s-immigrant-workers-say-trump-s-21135916.php