The night after Donald Trump was elected the next President of the United States, large protests broke out in several major U.S. cities. These mass demonstrations attracted the attention of celebrities and media pundits alike, but as their swelling numbers continued to prove, most of the people marching through the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere were everyday Americans of all shapes, colors and sizes. Like Victoria, a young high school student and anti-Trump protest organizer in California’s Bay Area who talked to CNN on Thursday.
When asked what a Donald Trump presidency would mean to her, Victoria offered an emotional explanation hinging on the well-being of her extended family members:
“It means a lot to me right now because a lot of my family, a lot of my friends are undocumented. It’s not fair, it’s really not fair that he said that he will deport every Mexican, every Central American. He said that basically Mexicans are drug dealers, and that’s not true! It’s very not true. We are a working class, we struggle in this city, and it’s very hard.”
Victoria never specifically identified a particular occurrence when referencing Trump’s calling Mexicans drug dealers. Considering the president-elect’s comments on immigration throughout the campaign, however, it really doesn’t matter. Trump often referred to undocumented immigrants — especially those from Mexico, and Central and South America — in unsavory ways.