President Trump reignited voter fraud hysteria in a recent tweet, claiming that 95,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in Texas. About 58,000 of these individuals, he suggested, voted in at least one U.S. election from 1996-2018.



58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID! @foxandfriends — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2019



But fact-checks immediately put Trump's claims into important context. The report the president was citing, released by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, merely said that up to 95,000 registered voters were noncitizens as they received their driver's licenses. As the Texas Tribune pointed out, many of these voters could have become naturalized citizens in the 22-year time span the report covered. So, ultimately, the findings indicated little about whether any of these people actually committed fraud.

This is just the latest of the president’s attempts to manufacture a perception that immigrants are flipping red states into Democratic strongholds, but it's Trump's own rhetoric that’s driving Latino support for Democrats. As Artemio Muniz, chairman of the Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans, once warned, it’s just this sort of baseless antagonism that could finally turn the faithfully red Texas blue. "The Democratic Party is having success, not just because they are organizing and because they have money, but because we have antagonized and disrespected the Hispanic community," he told KUT 90.5 in Austin.

Indeed, that kind of antagonism is what shifted California blue in the 1990s, when the state GOP supported a notoriously harsh immigration measure called Proposition 187. After passing with 59 percent of voter support, the new law forced state employees to report any unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities. It also barred the state’s undocumented population from attending public schools and utilizing other benefits.

Then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, fiercely backed the measure and even defended it as it crumbled under legal scrutiny. This brought lasting damage to the California GOP’s relationship with their Latino constituents, who understood that the measure’s passage would likely mean deportation of their friends and family members. When Wilson was first elected in 1990, he won 47 percent of the Latino vote. Four years later, that number plunged to 25 percent.

After Wilson’s term, California moved from a swing state to one that was reliably Democratic. With the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, no GOP gubernatorial candidate ever again received more than 30 percent of California’s Latino support. During that same time period, Texas was undergoing the opposite transformation as George W. Bush unseated Democratic incumbent Gov. Ann Richards in 1994. Although he won with only 28 percent of the Latino vote, he leveraged his inclusive approach to immigration and grew his support among Latinos to 50 percent during his re-election in 1998. “Every child ought to be educated regardless of the status of their parents," he said.

It’s clear the number of immigrants allowed within California’s borders isn’t why the state turned blue. It’s far more plausible that the state’s transformation is due to the GOP’s alienation of the Latino community in general. It would explain why California shifted blue while Texas became reliably red, even though both states had similarly-sized Latino populations.

In the age of Trump, Texas Republicans have abandoned George W. Bush’s successful approach in favor of Pete Wilson’s bad one. When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was first elected in 2012, he emphasized the importance of connecting with the Hispanic community. Six years later, he ran a campaign platform that included an end to universal birthright citizenship and a wall at the Southern border. His 16-point victory in 2012 shrank to less than 3 points in 2018. He even lost the reliably red Tarrant County, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress in decades.

Immigrants will always be the scapegoats for some Republicans struggling to explain why they can’t maintain a firm hold on conservative red states like Texas. But, by adopting Trump’s agenda, they aren’t doing anything but planning their party’s demise.

Sam Peak (@tiger_speak) specializes in immigration policy as a contributor to Young Voices.