MIAMI — Although Gustavo Garagorry is a Venezuelan immigrant, he agrees with Donald Trump when Trump calls the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who’ve entered the U.S. in recent years violent delinquents.
“I don’t want to generalize,” said Garagorry -- who two decades ago fled Venezuela’s socialist government and settled in Miami -- but in the last few years, “a lot of the people that’s come from Venezuela is criminals that’s come into this country.”
It’s a claim Trump has made a centerpiece of his campaign and that’s taken firm root among right-wing politicians and media. It’s also a false claim, unsupported by data. But it’s one that, somewhat surprisingly, has found some of its staunchest adherents among members of the Venezuelan-American community, even among those who are immigrants themselves.
“If you see what happens in Colorado, Chicago, New York, the Venezuelan gangs are there,” Garagorry said, citing news stories about crimes for which Venezuelan migrants have been convicted or arrested. “Assaulting, robbing, raping, killing. That’s what’s happening.”
The crimes have been isolated incidents. Police in some cities are concerned about a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. But local officials say Trump has "grossly exaggerated" its reach. And data makes clear that migrants commit fewer crimes than native born Americans.
But in established Venezuelan-American communities, like in Miami’s, it’s now common to hear people talk about the criminality of new Venezuelan migrants as if it’s irrefutable fact – in conversations at restaurants, on radio and web programs hosted by Venezuelan-American commentators, and on social media.
“We don’t want them here,” said Garagorry, who today is a U.S. citizen. “It’s not good for the reputation of the Venezuelan people. So what do we want? We want them deported.”
Recent polls have shown a growing minority of Latinos expressing support for the mass deportations Trump has promised to carry out if elected. There’s no simple or definitive answer as to why this support is growing. But the views of people like Garagorry -- who fears that newer Venezuelan migrants are giving the Venezuelan community a bad name -- help partially explain what’s going on.
NPR recently met Garagorry in the city of Doral, where he lives and is president of the Venezuelan American Republican Club of Miami Dade. We also spoke with a progressive Venezuelan-American, Valentina Pereda, who is pushing back on these views that many in her community are adopting about their countrymen. The conversations provide a window into how Donald Trump’s demonization of immigrant and Latino communities are widening rifts within those communities and forcing them to grapple with how to respond.
Gustavo Garagorry
For Garagorry, it’s about protecting the respect he feels he and many other Venezuelans worked for decades to earn through their labor and efforts to assimilate. He’s a business consultant, a staunch Republican, and a proud American.
“I have here more than 22 years, I’m working very hard, and I’m very happy to be here,” he said.
Garagorry was part of the wave of Venezuelans who began fleeing the country after Hugo Chavez took power in 1998 and started implementing socialist policies. Many were wealthy or upper-middle class Venezuelans who flew to Miami on tourist visas, overstayed, and worked to rebuild their professional careers.
In contrast, the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who’ve arrived in recent years are poorer people who’ve left in a final act of desperation, as economic opportunity and political stability in the country have crumbled. They’ve mostly traveled on foot to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they ask for asylum.
Garagorry believes they’re the worst elements of his country – delinquents, criminals, and gang members, just like Trump says. He acknowledges they’re not all bad.
“But a giant group of them are,” he claims. “How many? We don’t know. But it’s a lot. At least half, or more than half.”
Garagorry said his views have been heavily influenced by Trump’s rhetoric and the media’s coverage of crimes committed by Venezuelan migrants. He fears all the negative attention could lead to harmful stereotyping about Venezuelans in general and tarnish his people’s good name, subjecting them to ridicule and discrimination.
“It’s not good for us, the Venezuelans that came here 20, 30 years ago,” he said about the newer migrants from his country. “So we don’t want to be with them here in this country.”
Garagorry sees large scale deportations of these newer arrivals as the best solution. That’s why he said he supports Donald Trump’s candidacy – not despite his hard line on immigrants, but in large part because of it. He said most of his friends, family and peers feel the same way.
Asked by NPR whether he worried that some of those people without citizenship or still pending asylum claims could be scooped up by a deportation dragnet, which Trump has promised would be the largest in history, Garagorry scoffed.
“They're going to deport the criminals," he said. "They're not going to deport the people who get up at 6 in the morning to earn a living for their families. They're not going to deport them. I'm convinced of that."
Valentina Pereda
Valentina Pereda said she first realized how widely the right-wing narratives about Venezuelan migrants were being adopted by fellow Venezuelans when she heard her mother start to repeat them.
“I said, ‘excuse me? You were an undocumented immigrant yourself for 21 years,’” Pereda recalled saying to her mother. “’What is this feeling?’ And she started saying things like, ‘yeah, but you know, these people are different.’”
It was a sobering moment that Pereda, who lives in North Miami, said convinced her to do something.
“We are one of the youngest diasporas in the country, so I understand the desire to protect the image of us,” she said. “But if the data is telling us that less than one percent of these migrants are actually committing violent crimes, then it would be best to start looking at the data and not just what sensationalist narratives are trying to condition us with.”
Pereda started speaking with other Venezuelans, including her mother, about the risks of buying into the belief that recent Venezuelan migrants are criminals. Many Venezuelan immigrants who've been in the U.S. for decades or longer see a big difference between themselves and the often poorer, often darker-skinned migrants who are coming as part of the more recent wave, Pereda said.
"But my warning to my people is, we need to be the first ones to push back and fight against this narrative," she said. "Because what happens when it gets so out of control, where you have no power at all, and then you become the enemy? Then we're in trouble."
Her mother, Gisela Pereda, said it took her some time to understand that.
But when she hired several recent migrants to work for her catering business, and heard their stories about crossing seven countries on foot to reach the U.S., she gained new perspective.
"Even we Venezuelan people living in this country have no idea about the nightmare they go through," Gisela Pereda said. "You really have to be brave."
Last year, Valentina Pereda, a former Obama administration aide, co-founded the Venezuelan Diaspora Project to spread a more positive message about Venezuelan migrants. She works with artists, photographers, and writers who’ve recently arrived to promote their work and their talents to a wider audience.
"Everybody ultimately is chasing the same American dream," she said. "To choose to deport members of our community, to break us apart, that's very short-sighted, self-centered, and it weakens us. Instead, how do we organize so that one day, when these people get their papers, we can become a voting force in this country? So that we can have power?"
Note: The radio version of this story originally aired on Oct. 21, 2024.
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