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 Inside the rally at the American Airlines Center sports arena, the
biggest cheers from the thousands of attendees erupted when the
Republican front-runner said it was time to stop illegal
immigration.
"It's a massive problem," Trump said as the crowd around him stood
roaring and waving Trump campaign signs and American flags.
But when the rally ended, supporters walked to their cars through a
gauntlet of protesters, many of them Hispanic, shouting "shame on
you." Some yelled back: "Keep them out!" Police struggled to keep
the two sides separate.
Trump, a New York businessman-turned-politician, has said he would
deport the 11 million people estimated to be living in the United
States illegally and build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. In a
speech on June 16 launching his campaign, he said of people crossing
the Mexican border: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
they're rapists."
His comments drew immediate criticism, but in the weeks that
followed Trump insisted they had not hurt his popularity among
Latinos.
Dallas is 42 percent Hispanic and 51 percent white, but the
demographics of the crowd of about 20,000 who came to see Trump was
much different. Latino supporters were hard to find. Karina
Ramirez, a reporter for the local Spanish-language newspaper al Dia,
roamed the arena looking for Latinos, studying the faces in the
crowd. She approached a woman in a short, tight dress covered in
paper printouts of Trump photographs. "Are you Hispanic?" she asked.
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"Of course not!" The woman said.
Ramirez finally found a couple, Davina Saenz, 28, and Ebaristo
Torres, 35, who said they were Latino Trump enthusiasts.
"He's really speaking about change," said Saenz, who was born in
Texas to a Mexican father.
"I feel the need to protect the border," Torres said.
Saenz added: "My mom, she's so anti-Trump."
Trump spoke at length on a wide range of topics from a renegotiation
of trade deals with China and Japan to a replacement of President
Barack Obama's health care plan, drawing regular laughs and cheers
although many attendees began getting up to leave about an hour into
the speech.
(Reporting By Emily Flitter in Dallas; Additional reporting by Chris
Dignam; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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