Brownsville, Texas —
Daisy Alcazar is a one-issue voter this midterm year: stopping Donald Trump.
“I don’t think we are going to survive if we don’t speak up this election,” Alcazar said. “We are on fire. We are being burned down to the floor. Our businesses. Our economy.”
Alcazar and her husband own La Pale, a traditional Mexican ice cream and fruit bar shop. They have a storefront in Brownsville and sell through a local grocery chain. “Our life savings are on the line,” she said.
Walk-in sales are down 50%. First, it was inflation’s toll on working families.
“The splurge money,” she said. “We are a luxury item right now.”
Then, the fear factor. Alcazar was one of several small-business owners who told CNN many Hispanic families are afraid to go out for ice cream, or burgers or coffee — especially if the business is Latino-owned — due to fears of being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We are a target now,” Alcazar said. “And it doesn’t matter if you are documented or undocumented, legal or illegal. … People are afraid to use public transportation because ICE enforcement is literally walking up and down the streets. We cannot normalize this.”
We visited Alcazar and South Texas as part of our “All Over the Map” project, an effort to trac
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