CLEVELAND — An undocumented immigrant from Mexico on Wednesday said that Donald Trump and the Republican Party's platform could "incite" violence against marginalized groups.
"A lot of the language that's been coming out of Donald Trump and the Republican Party has been inciting a lot of fear within our community," Sheridan Aguirre told the Washington Blade during an interview in Cleveland's Public Square. "A lot of what's happening here at this convention is that they're explicitly creating language for a platform that's going to only incite more violence towards marginalized community."
Aguirre, who held a bisexual Pride flag at the end of the interview, was born in the Mexican state of Guerrero. His mother brought him to the U.S. in 1997 when he was a year old.
Aguirre was among the dozen members of United We Dream Action, which describes itself as the country's "immigrant youth-led organization," who were in Public Square. They were among the hundreds of people who later marched to the arena in which the Republican National Convention is taking place in protest of Trump's controversial plan to build a wall along the Mexican border to stop undocumented immigrants from entering the U.S.
Aguirre, who lives in Austin, Texas, noted to the Blade that Trump also described Mexicans as "rapists" when he announced his campaign in June 2015. He also alluded to the billionaire's call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. in the wake of last month's massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and the mass shooting at a social service center in San Bernardino, Calif., in December 2015 that were carried out by assailants who pledged their allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.
"We're here to essentially Donald Trump and the Republican Party know that we're not going to tolerate their hate," said Aguirre. "We're not going to tolerate their xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia."
Platform has 'a lot of obstacles'
Aguirre spoke with the Blade two days after delegates to the Republican National Convention approved what Log Cabin Republicans described as the most anti-LGBT platform in the party's history.
North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, who co-chairs the GOP platform committee, noted on Wednesday during a luncheon the Family Research Council co-hosted that the platform "recognizes . . . traditional marriage is the anchor for family and society." Aguirre told the Blade this position would adversely impact the 267,000 undocumented immigrants who he said are currently in the U.S.
"Marriage is now one way of petitioning for a pathway to citizenship," he said.
"Things are interlocked," added Aguirre. "There are a lot of obstacles that are coming out from this platform."
