Trump’s Hispanic Heritage Month event draws criticism from first Afro Latina in Congress, who stresses Black-Latino unity

Rep. Analilia Mejia responds to President Trump’s Hispanic Heritage Month remarks, criticizing his immigration policies and calls to separate Black and Latino communities.

President Donald Trump hosted hundreds at the White House on Wednesday for a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, where he bragged about his record support from Latino voters in the 2024 election and argued that his economic policies are bringing them prosperity and that his immigration policies are protecting their communities.

“Two years ago, we won more votes from the Hispanic Americans than any Republican president in history, and we won more than almost anybody that’s ever run for office,” Trump told the room of Latino supporters inside the East Room.

The president also framed his administration’s economic agenda as restoring opportunity for Hispanic families, saying, “Under the Trump administration, that American dream is back, and it’s bigger and better than ever before.”

But U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia, the first Afro-Latino to serve in the United States Congress, told theGrio that Trump’s support among Latino voters has waned and that his policies are bringing anything but good to their communities. The freshman congresswoman called the president’s actions “destructive” and slammed his attempts to pit Latino and Black communities against each another.

“It’s interesting to watch him try to pander to a group, but his actions, as always, speak louder than his words,” said Mejia, who has represented New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District since April, filling the vacant seat previously held by now-Governor Mikie Sherrill.

Congresswoman Mejia said Latino communities are “living in fear” amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, which has included mass detentions and deportations—some of which have resulted in deaths and have been found to be unconstitutional by federal courts. Mejia said that fear has been “irrespective of their immigration status.”

Despite the president’s claims during the 2024 campaign that his administration would only target violent criminals, data shows that a majority of those detained by ICE are non-criminals.

“I see it every time I visit Delaney Hall, meeting people who were either following the law, had court dates, have work permits, were captured at work sites or at schools or even hospitals, and what it is creating is a sense of fear within the Latino community and in the broader community,” said Mejia.

During his Hispanic Heritage Month remarks, President Trump often veered away from discussing Hispanic heritage and the contributions of Latinos to American culture, instead highlighting the construction of his $600 million ballroom and other White House renovations. The president told the group of Latinos that they would be “the first people of consequence to ever step on the new ballroom floor.”

Rep. Mejia scoffed at the president’s fixation with construction as millions of Latino communities struggle to afford the country’s rising cost of living and are losing jobs.

“I’m not surprised that he would take the limited opportunities that he grants himself to engage with my community in an authentic way, and instead pivot to his own narcissistic greatest hits,” she told theGrio. “This president has, by throwing these tariffs like they’re Mardi Gras beads, looking for loopholes, despite what our Supreme Court has stated, is driving up the cost of construction, new home construction, and homes overall, impacting a very large Latino workforce.”

Congresswoman Mejia also called out Trump’s efforts to drive a wedge between Latino and Black communities, in which he has repeatedly claimed immigrants were stealing jobs from Black workers.

“We know that the othering, the ostracizing of immigrant communities, and pitting one immigrant community against another [community] is a tactic often utilized to weaken the majority of people who disagree with you,” said Mejia. “So, of course, Donald Trump…hopes that we will fight each other instead of focusing our energies on addressing the fact that he’s creating a healthcare crisis in this country by not only allowing the ACA tax credits to expire but by gutting Medicaid and Medicare.”

The New Jersey lawmaker added, “He’s lowering people’s quality of life and, frankly, life expectancy. It has a disproportionate impact on both Black and Brown communities, and he’d much rather tell us that it’s each other’s fault instead of admitting that it’s his regressive and destructive policies that are causing the most harm.”