Marco Gutierrez, the “Latinos for Trump” founder who warned unchecked immigration would lead to “taco trucks on every corner,” might have his nightmare come true on Election Day. Sort of.
The US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is organizing an effort hoping to put taco trucks on every corner — or, rather, every polling site — on Election Day.
Gutierrez, a top Latino surrogate for Donald Trump’s campaign, recently warned, in vivid terms, of negative consequences if America did not adopt tighter immigration policies.
“My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner,” Gutierrez told MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid.
Last week, treating Gutierrez’s warning as a challenge of sorts, the USHCC created the initiative “Guac the Vote.” Its aim — mobilizing taco truck owners to encourage its customers to register to vote, and park their trucks outside polling sites on Nov. 8.
“The idea of taking the taco trucks is not even a Mexican or Hispanic symbol — it’s an American symbol,” said Chamber spokesman Pablo Manriquez. “The hope is that we’re going to be able to deliver quite a few trucks to quite a few polling centers.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond for comment to this story.
Manriquez said he’s not sure how many taco trucks there are in the country — but he believes its in the thousands — and there’s no recent data that shows how many election centers there are in the United States. Data in 2004 shows that there were 113,754 polling places, according to a report by the US Election Assistance Commission.
In July, the USHCC endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for president, which was a first for the normally nonpartisan group.
“Hillary Clinton will be America’s first American small business president. She grew up in a small business. She understands the challenges of small businesses. And throughout her campaign, she’s engaged our organization and our business owners all over the country,” the group’s president, Javier Palomarez, told CNN’s “New Day” at the time.
Immigration has been a hot topic in this election after Trump mentioned Mexican immigrants in his June 2015 campaign announcement.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump famously said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since then, Trump has faced criticism for his comments about building a border wall and having Mexico pay for it, as well as accusing a US-born federal judge of Mexican heritage, Gonzalo Curiel, for being biased about presiding about a Trump University case.
Trump met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Aug. 31 in Mexico City, to discuss his comments about Mexico paying for the border wall Trump has pledged to build if he is president. Peña Nieto reiterated his response that Mexico would not pay for such a wall.
