At the second presidential debate of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promoted a conspiracy theory about Springfield, Ohio's Haitian community: “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Haitians and immigrants, in general, had no choice but to watch the lie spread like wildfire. After all, white politicians have long wielded the dog-eating trope against immigrants in the US, especially Asian immigrants.
"There's a stereotype about Filipino people that we eat dogs," 25-year-old Sophia, whose mother voted for Trump in the 2024 election, tells Teen Vogue. "And I was just like, did my mom even hear that? What in the world?"
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Sophia, who asked to use a pseudonym to speak candidly about her family’s situation, says her mother voted for Trump even though she's an immigrant from the Philippines and supports scientific and medical research. "I don't think she would ever be comfortable to admit that she believed in something that really was completely against her," Sophia says.
While non-white, first-generation immigrant voters have historically voted Democratic, some have moved right. As was the case among the Black, Arab, and Latino communities overall, the percentage of immigrant and first-generation voters from these groups who swung Republican on the presidential ticket increased in the 2024 election. As Trump's anti-immigrant agenda is put into place, some of their children are wondering how their parents could have supported this candidate — and if their relationships can ever recover.
They find themselves caught up in a swirl of hows and whys. How could their parents have voted for someone with a history of anti-immigration policies, even though they're immigrants themselves? Why would they vote for someone who has felony convictions if they're forced to prove to the rest of American society that they are upstanding citizens?
Chioma, a 20-year-old Utah native, says she doesn’t agree with the political views of her parents but isn’t surprised by their political affiliation. (She asked to withhold her last name to be able to candidly discuss her family relationships.) Both of her parents are Nigerian immigrants who arrived in the US in 2002, after one of them won the Diversity Visa Program lottery, allowing the couple to move together. One of her parents at first agreed with Trump’s approach to immigration. "If we came here legally, we came here legally," she explains, from her parents' initial point of view. “And so there's no reason why other people can't come here legally.” However, since Trump started targeting international students, the parent who voted for Trump is now on the fence over those immigration policies.
The administration has delivered on promises to slash immigration protections, including issuing orders to cancel flights to the US for refugees who were legally approved to enter the country, and moving to end birthright citizenship. It has also unexpectedly revoked college students’ visas (specifically, those from Muslim-majority countries, along with other countries in Asia and Africa), leaving them open to potential detention and deportation. And it has reportedly sent migrant detainees without serious criminal records to Guántanamo Bay, initiated mass deportations to El Salvador, greenlit Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at schools and places of worship, and more.
Chioma's parent's stance isn't uncommon among US immigrants. Journalist Paola Ramos captured the dynamic in The Atlantic while interviewing Latino immigrants and first-generation Americans who opposed immigration: "I have come to understand that anti-immigrant Latinos aren’t just afraid of loss. Unlike white Americans, they also have something to prove: that they, too, belong in America." A study published in the European Journal of Political Economy in 2023 found that "immigrant elites" — immigrants who are the most economically successful — are more likely to have anti-immigrant views.
"I think one key issue is that the immigrants often represented in Trump's speeches are 'criminals' and 'murderers,' which is not the average immigrant," Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science and social policy at Northwestern University, tells Teen Vogue via email. " It is possible that immigrants supporting Trump didn't realize he was speaking about immigrants who were not criminals."
Bonilla clarifies that simply being in the United States without the documents required under federal immigration law isn't a criminal offense but rather a civil issue (though a person can face criminal charges depending on how they entered the country). "People with criminal charges are a smaller class of undocumented migrants, and that is a distinction that gets blurred among both white and non-white voters," she says.
Sixteen-year-old Maitry, who lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and also asked to withhold her last name to protect her family’s privacy, says that her dad, who immigrated to the US from India, voted for Trump in part because of undocumented immigration. "He thought it wasn't a hundred percent fair for [people like himself] to go through so much hard work and do so well in their education just to get here," she explains. "And then some people are coming illegally just to stay here. I'm sure he does know people who came illegally." In 2022, India ranked behind Mexico and El Salvador as one of the top three countries of origin for undocumented US immigrants, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report.
Twenty-one-year-old Olivia describes her family’s political views as a "frustrating" mix of pro-Trump sentiment and loving acceptance. Her mom immigrated from Colombia as a teenager, escaping violence in the country during the 1980s. Despite having family members who are undocumented and even witnessing people her family knows being deported, her mother still voted for Trump. "I think it is that concept of, 'I got to come in, I know why I'm here, but everybody else might not have that same story, so I'm fine with shutting that door,'" says the Tampa, Florida native, who also asked not to use her last name.
Olivia says her father, who is white and voted for Trump, plays a big role in shaping her mother's political views. He watches Fox News regularly and often parrots the rhetoric that he hears back to Olivia's mother. Olivia has learned to carefully navigate conversations around politics when she talks about the state of affairs with her parents. She says her mother is the most open to changing her perspective.
When Olivia came out to her parents as queer, they were both accepting, something she expected since her mom's brother is gay. However, her parents were worried about how others would treat her. "They said to me that they know gay people are targeted for their identity, and they want me to be safe," Olivia says. "Which is really interesting because now we are being targeted, but they're voting for the people who are doing the targeting."
Olivia says that one of the primary reasons her parents voted for Trump was his stance on the economy and taxes because her father is a small business owner. "I think the biggest thing for them is probably the economy," she said. "I think they believe him when he says that he's going to make things better for the working class, for the middle class, and that he's going to cut taxes." Despite the toll that the recently imposed tariffs have taken on the economy, Olivia says these views haven't changed.
Thirty-year-old Aimee, who also asked to withhold her last name, says she went through something similar. Her parents, Vietnamese immigrants who came to the US when they were young, are also business owners who support Trump largely because of his stance on taxes, even though some businesses are already struggling with the administration’s flood of policy changes. Yet both of her parents support abortion access and protecting the LGBTQ+ community, she says. "I just feel like a lot of their views are very liberal, but because they are business owners, they voted for him because of the taxes mostly," she says. "And I don't think that is justified, especially when they have two daughters."
Aimee and her sister grew up in New Jersey, and about a decade ago, her parents moved to Florida, where, Aimee says, her parents' community is mostly Republican. Fox News is on constantly in their home, but it wasn't when she was growing up. This was the first election where Aimee's parents voted for a Republican president. They had voted for Democratic presidential candidates up until November.
Chioma, too, says there’s plenty of complexity to be found in her parents' relationship with Trump. While her parents are loyal Republicans, they dislike Trump as a person. They also support diversity and inclusion policies, which the administration has demonized, and they're supportive of Chioma going to a Historically Black College.
If there's anything that Sophia, Chioma, Maitry, Olivia, and Aimee have in common, it's that they're still asking their parents why. They have learned to pick their battles, but they've also found ways to talk about the issues they care most about with respect and empathy.
Still, these women can't help but ask, what if? "I always wonder if all of this was happening 15 years ago when she didn't have papers," Olivia muses of her mother. "Would that change anything?"
