An election where NY migrants took center stage, whether they liked it or not

Enrique Peña said his family left Peru in 2016 due to political instability. But since arriving in the United States, he said he’s witnessed rising anti-immigrant hostility and was alarmed by the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

“I thought it would be a lot more stable here,” said Peña, 26, who lives in Corona and has protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “But just seeing how in a matter of these years, we had an attempted coup, it's unreal.”

Tuesday will mark the end of a 2024 campaign where the migrant crisis and immigrants were prominently featured in both national and local candidate commercials, position platforms and general discourse, sometimes in crude and xenophobic terms.

For many on the receiving end of the negative attention, there will be no immediate opportunity to answer back as non-citizens are ineligible to vote in U.S. elections. But naturalized citizens make up a record 1 in 10 eligible voters, and their views could be pivotal in some key races.

The presidential race especially has left a mark with immigrant New Yorkers on the sidelines, as well as those who will cast votes.

“I can't help but feel a lot of dread,” Bella, an immigrant and green card recipient from Canada whose family is originally from Eastern Europe, said of the election. The Brooklyn resident asked that her last name not be used due to fear of retribution from immigration officials.

Bella said that when she received her green card she got a notice from immigration authorities that they would monitor her social media activity.

“That kind of sent the message to me that I'm not supposed to be talking about politics,” she said.

The presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked anti-immigrant language and ideas from the very start, and hasn’t let up since. At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump promised to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

The former president previously told supporters that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” drawing immediate criticism from Democrats who said the phrase echoed the words of Adolf Hitler.

More recently, Trump and his vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance made false claims that Haitian immigrants ate dogs. Trump attributed Mayor Eric Adams’ federal indictment woes to Adams' complaints about the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis, which has brought some 220,000 migrants to the city since 2022. And at Trump's campaign rally at Madison Square Garden last month, a speaker referred to Puerto Rico, whose residents are U.S. citizens, as a “floating island of garbage.”

In recent days, U.S. officials have charged that “Russian influence actors” have amplified Trump's false claims about non-citizens voting by circulating a fake video showing a Haitian man claiming to have voted multiple times in Georgia.

But Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, has also gained notice from local immigrants for promising tough action to secure the border. And congressional candidates from both sides of the political aisle have pledged the same tough stand against migrants, responding to polls putting immigration at the top of voters’ concerns.

Polling in the final days before the election indicate that voters from immigrant communities broadly support Harris.

According to the National Hispanic Voters Public Opinion Survey conducted in October by Florida International University, Harris leads 57% to 33% among Latino voters. And 66% of Asian American voters intend to cast their ballot for Harris, versus 28% for Trump, according to a September survey by the group AAPI Data. Among Indian Americans, Harris leads 60% to 31%, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But recent polling reveals a “stark gender gap,” with rising support for Trump among men, especially men under the age of 40.

Nathaly Rubio-Torio, executive director of Queens-based nonprofit Voces Latinas, said a great deal is at stake in this election for immigrant communities, including the tens of thousands of new arrivals who remain in New York City after the recent influx of migrants.

“It's a very important election,” Rubio-Torio said, “because what's been put in place to help these people apply for work authorization, apply for asylum, just get a chance to stay legally in the country and work for themselves and support themselves is at risk.”

For some immigrants, the ratcheting up of anti-immigrant rhetoric has been alarming.

Bella said she knew a number of Haitian Americans and pointed to the false claims propagated by the Trump campaign that Haitian immigrants in Ohio, many of whom are settled there with legal permanent status, were eating neighborhood dogs.

“That had such a profound effect on Haitian immigrants, not only in Springfield, Ohio, but everywhere in this country,” she said. “I can see that people really take political talking points and they use it for violence.”

Despite that misinformation, voter fraud by citizens and non-citizens is exceedingly rare, including in New York, according to election monitoring groups.

“Voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent,” said the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators.”

The conservative Heritage Foundation listed 26 election fraud cases in New York between 1983 and 2023. These include that of Jason Schofield, a Republican elections commissioner for Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, New York, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to voter fraud.

In New York City, the Queens district attorney in July announced the indictment six people who allegedly submitted fraudulent absentee ballot applications during the 2023 City Council primary race in District 20.

While an array of poll results show immigrants lining up behind Harris, some take issue with the vice president’s promise to fight for “strong border security.”

Peña, the Corona resident, noted that Trump had jokingly said he’d gift Harris with a MAGA hat, “because she's basically saying the same stuff that he said in 2016.”

It was “heartbreaking," Peña added, "to understand that no matter who wins, there's still going to be pain.”