Latino voter group launches "F the Wall" campaign
"F the Wall" is the suggestive shorthand for a new Latino American voter registration campaign that officially goes by the name, "Fight the Wall! Register a Mexican to Vote!"
"Ever since the presidential election's discourse turned into 'Deport undocumented workers, build a border wall,' we've been contemplating how we should take that energy...and turn it into greater voter participation through voter registration and turnout," said Antonio Gonzales, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the non-profit, non-partisan group that launched the effort.
The campaign aims to register and turn out as many as it can of the 8 to 10 million U.S.-born unregistered Mexican Americans in the U.S. so they can vote in November's general election.
Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has built his campaign on the idea of a border wall, but he's apparently not the only presidential candidate who has inspired the campaign.
"On both sides, there has been a majority of people [saying] build a wall up until now," said Gonzales, who added that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are "not innocent either" and "haven't disavowed the wall."
Founded in 1974, the project estimates that it has since registered 2.5 million people to vote. On average, Gonzales says his group has helped register between 50,000 and 250,000 people each presidential election cycle and has raised between $3 million and $5 million.
Right now, the group is promoting its campaign online and on a smartphone application it created that helps guide people through the voter registration process.
"Completing the 2,000-mile US-Mexico Border Wall is advocated by various presidential candidates. If completed, the U.S.-Mexico border wall will intensify repression and exclusion of immigrants and Latinos within the U.S.," the campaign says.
The project is also working on soliciting endorsements, fundraising and organizing events. In August, it aims to deploy "street teams" of about 1,000 organizers to help people register to vote in 14 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
While Gonzales says his group's campaign isn't only a direct response to Trump, he admitted that the billionaire businessman is a major reason.
In his presidential announcement speech nearly a year ago, Trump revealed his vision for an immigration reform plan.
"I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall."
"Trump is a good reason, you know," Gonzales said as he discussed what provoked the campaign. "Trump is a good villain. A good villain is a terrible thing to waste."
As for his claims about Clinton's and Sanders' records, both of the Democratic presidential candidates have voted for measures that were intended to bolster border security and erect a border fence.
Last November, Clinton touted her vote for a border fence at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire.
"I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and I do think you have to control your borders," said Clinton, who then added, "But I think it's also true that we need to do more to try to number one, deal with the people who are already here...it is just never gonna happen that we're gonna round up and deport 11 million people. I don't care how tall the wall is or how big the door is. It is an unnecessarily provocative thing to say."
When she served in the Senate, she voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 that was signed by President George W. Bush. The legislation authorized the construction of 700 miles of fortified double-layered fencing across the entire length of Arizona's border with Mexico and the border along other states.
Asked how Clinton feels about a wall along the border now, Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the campaign, told CBS News that it would be a waste.
"As Hillary Clinton has said before, she believes our border is more secure than it has been in decades. Instead of talking about building an expensive wall that would waste billions in taxpayer money, Clinton believes we should be acting on comprehensive immigration reform and that's why she will introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill in her first hundred days in office," Hinojosa said.
CBS News also asked Sanders' campaign for comment and his team pointed to remarks the Vermont senator made in March on the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona.
"We don't need a wall and we don't need barbed wire," he said. "We need to fix our broken criminal justice system. First and foremost, it goes without saying that we need comprehensive immigration reform: we need to take 11 million undocumented people out of the shadows, out of fear, and we need to provide them with legal protection, and we need to provide them with a path toward citizenship."
Sanders voted against the 2006 bill when he served in the House, but he voted for a proposal in 2013 that had a provision calling for the construction of more border fencing.
Even though Gonzales criticizes the records of all of the major presidential candidates, election surveys show Trump's unpopularity among Hispanic voters could hurt his chances in the general election.
More than three-quarters of Hispanic voters viewed Trump unfavorably in a March Gallup survey while only 12 percent viewed him favorably. Just over half of Hispanic voters said in a national February poll from The Washington Post/Univision News that they would vote for the Democratic nominee in November, a third said they were unsure whom to support and only 14 percent definitively said they would vote for the Republican nominee.
In that survey, 60 percent of Hispanic voters said the Democratic Party would do a better job handling immigration issues and 20 percent said the the same about the GOP. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanic voters described Trump's views on immigration as offensive and nearly a quarter said they aren't.
"A wall is exactly the wrong thing to do," said Gonzales who named the Berlin Wall and the wall along the border of the West Bank in Israel as bad metaphors.
"You look at all the other walls in the world and there's basically proxies or metaphors for war. I don't think U.S. Latinos support the notion that there is a U.S. war on the southern border."
