The Latina Anti-Immigration Activist Who Set The Stage For Donald Trump
*It’s a long read but worth the investment. You’re going to find names that you may not have been familiar with, but that you should know: Maria Espinoza, John Tanton. The nativist, anti-immigrant wave we see is not random, it’s well-funded and well-articulated by people who have aligned themselves with high levels of power. VL
By David Noriega, BuzzFeed
Robin Hvidston held up an X-ray of a human skull pierced by a metal rod, clear across the eye sockets from temple to temple. Outraged gasps escaped from the small crowd.
“Please take note of this,” Hvidston said. “This picture was taken one day before graduation. One day. This is what happened to him.” She was reading a statement prepared for the occasion by Kathy Woods, mother of Steven Woods, the high school student whose skull was pictured in the X-ray. Steve was killed in 1993 on an Orange County beach after an altercation with another group of teenagers — as he and his friends tried to drive away, the other group pelted their cars with rocks, bottles, wood blocks, and a paint roller that crashed through Woods’ window and speared him through the head.
[pullquote]”… the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Center for New Community began tracking Espinoza’s connections to organizations they consider part of the white nationalist movement, many of them founded by John Tanton.”[/pullquote]Kathy Woods learned later that several of the youths behind the attack were living illegally in the United States. “I stridently believed then, and I do to this day, that if the federal government would do their job as they’re mandated to do, and defend our borders, and keep American citizens safe, Steve — along with many, many other victims — would be alive today.”
Espinoza is a rising star in a constellation of activists belonging to the once marginalized anti-immigration right. Nativist sentiments have long existed on both the right and the left, based on the perception that undocumented immigrants harm American workers. But [tweet_dis]the rise of Donald Trump turned a spotlight on ideas that were once confined to the hardline fringe,[/tweet_dis] particularly the conviction that immigrants are violent criminals. And Espinoza, whose group has worked directly with the Trump campaign, is a pioneer in a particularly effective form of advocacy based on that very premise: using the gut-wrenching stories of those whose family members have been killed by undocumented immigrants to push for more restrictions on immigration.
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[Photo courtesy of Rightwing Watch]
