It is the morning of November 6, 2024, and Donald Trump seems to have won the recent U.S. presidential election. In many ways, his victory is not surprising. His opponent, Kamala Harris, was part of an unpopular administration that oversaw widespread inflation and increases in the cost of living for all U.S. citizens. Economics is often the best predictor of election outcomes, and if you focus on grocery store prices, Trump becoming the 47th president should not shock you.
But when Harris became the presidential candidate, it seemed like she could defeat that conventional wisdom. Polls reflected how excited people were to have someone new, a change from business as usual, who would enact new policies for the people. From that moment, the Harris campaign took every chance to remind her base that she would not be different. She promised to be a strong supporter of Israel, she rarely criticized Joe Biden’s handling of the economy and, most importantly, she did not speak to the fears of immigrants in the United States.
The most appalling feature of Trump’s continued political career is his constant and vile dehumanization of immigrants. This election cycle saw the worst of what the former and future president had to offer when it came to the DREAMers — somehow outdoing his hateful rhetoric from his 2016 run. His comments were often so ridiculously hateful that they were widely mocked and parodied in mainstream media, and now he is going to be president again. In a more respectable country, Donald Trump’s political career would have ended on that debate stage after claiming that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors' cats and dogs and promising mass deportations.
So why did he win? Why did he win a larger share of the Hispanic vote this election than in 2016 or 2020, even though he continues to label Hispanic immigrants as rapists and murderers?
It is because the Harris campaign and the administration she is a part of did as little as possible for immigrants. She did not call out Trump or his comments for what they represented — a threat of government-sponsored violence towards any immigrant in the country, especially non-white immigrants. She did not forward policies that would help people entering the United States escape poverty or violence. Instead, for many recent immigrants from Palestine and Lebanon, she promised to continue the policies that helped destroy their homes. Instead of explaining how she would help the poor and huddled masses, and how immigration is not a threat to the United States in any way, Harris was courting the endorsement of Dick and Liz Cheney.
It is possible that Harris still would have lost the election if she had taken the time to represent immigrants? Candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tried to offer something new and failed to convince the Democratic Party that they were worth a shot compared to lifelong politicians like Joe Biden. But if Harris had taken the time to fight for immigrants when they needed it most, she could have helped Democrats keep control of the House of Representatives, which would hopefully backstop any promised mass deportation or unjust imprisonment of immigrants.
The Harris campaign has left the Democratic Party in shambles, full of lifelong politicians who have repeatedly failed to protect immigrants or any member of their base from a right-wing mission to undermine basic dignity, freedoms and economic security. I only hope that the party learns something from this embarrassing defeat and that if there is another election, a new candidate is willing to speak up for immigrants without reservation.
Colton Barta
second-year law student
