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Rash of hateful incidents leaves Latinos feeling unwelcome

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- For Latinos trying to survive the Age of Trump with their dignity intact, the hate just keeps on coming.

Americans can't make up their minds whether they want to appropriate Latino culture or stamp it out altogether. One minute, everyone in the country is going loco for Latinos; the next, they've just gone plum loco.

It's time to take inventory. I don't want to keep you here you all week, so let's only focus on 10 incidents from the last several months.

-- Columnist Ann Coulter told radio host Lars Larson that putting the National Guard on the U.S.-Mexico border won't be enough to stop immigrants from crossing it unless "they're going to shoot one and send a message to the rest." Message received: Coulter is a ghoul.

-- Bragging about his deportation record, President Trump told a delegation of California officials: "We're taking people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals." The next day, Trump claimed he was referring only to MS-13 gang members.

-- White House chief of staff John Kelly said that undocumented immigrants from Latin America do not assimilate very well because they are often poorly educated and "overwhelmingly rural people" who "don't have skills." Of course, much the same thing was said about Kelly's Irish ancestors.

 

-- Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren came to Kelly's defense and insisted that welcoming immigrants with "low skills" and "low education" who speak foreign languages is "not what this country is based on." Quite right. It's more accurate to say that low-skilled immigration is what this country was built on.

-- In Havre, Montana, at a gas station near the U.S.-Canada border, two women were singled out and questioned by a Border Patrol officer who suspected they were undocumented immigrants. The probable cause? The women were speaking Spanish. Both are U.S. citizens. So linguistic profiling is a thing now?

-- At a Starbucks in Southern California, a young man ordered a white mocha and an iced caramel macchiato. The word "Beaner," a racial slur for Latinos, was on the labels attached to his drinks. Starbucks apologized and said it is investigating the incident. The company has a Venti-sized image problem.

-- An angry white lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg was caught on video berating two women for the sin of speaking Spanish at a New York deli. He threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He later apologized and claimed that he is not racist. Sure. He just plays one in videos.

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