What’s it like to be one of the few minority supporters among the president’s overwhelmingly white following?

'I get called a sell-out all the time': Trump's voters of colour speak out

Donald Trump likes to claim, among other things, that his presidency has been a huge success for non-white Americans. But for all his claims, repeated polls show the president remains very unpopular among people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Nowhere is that more apparent than at his rallies.

In Montoursville, Pennsylvania, on Monday evening, the line of people waiting to see Trump stretched roughly the amount of time it took this Guardian reporter to walk 15 minutes. Aside from length – thousands and thousands of supporters had turned up – one other thing was noticeable: the line was overwhelmingly filled with white people.

Sign up for the US morning briefing

“I get called a sell-out all the time,” said Sany Dash. She was standing outside the aircraft hangar where the president was due to appear in a couple of hours’ time.

“A sell-out and a traitor to my race. It happens almost every day online.”

Dash, in her 40s, lives in New York City, and was born in India. She said her abusers – whose platform of choice is usually Facebook – accuse her of being a “white Christian” who has stolen a profile photo from the internet and is now masquerading as Hispanic. In reality, she caught the Trump bug during his 2016 campaign, and on Monday she and a friend were selling Trump baseball caps which bore the message: “Bye bye Dems.” Dash was wearing the red version, which had the US flag embossed on the peak.

“Oh hell no,” she said when asked if she wore the hat in New York. “They’d kill me.”

Republican Justin Amash faces party's wrath after call to impeach Trump Read more

Dash runs technology companies in New York. She said people commonly think she supports Trump because of the potential benefits for business. But the first issue she raised was immigration.

“I don’t think illegal immigrants should be coming in any more. Why should they not stand in line like we did,” Dash said. Her family emigrated to the US after her father was offered a job by Nasa.

“They need to pay. You can’t just be here for free,” she said.

“Everyone else, when you do visa processing you wait in India or wherever else to come to the US. These guys don’t wait. They just … they get,” Dash said.

Dash also said she had detected hypocrisy from the left in their investigations into Trump.

“I feel like Hillary’s side never got investigated. Why don’t we ever see the Democrats in trouble? Why do they never get investigated?” Dash said. (Hillary Clinton was investigated by a Benghazi select committee for two years, while her husband was impeached.)

Dash has been to 45 Trump rallies in the past two years. She had noticed the lack of diversity among the crowd.

“The brown and black people are scared to come out and to be labelled,” Dash said.

“These [white] people, this is their safe haven.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sany Dash at Donald Trump’s rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian

Trump has repeatedly said his support has increased among ethnic minority voters. But there is scant evidence for his claims.

In January the president made a series of suspect assertions regarding his approval among Hispanic and Latino voters. Politico was among the news outlets to point out that he was wrong.

In 2016 exit polls showed that just 8% of African American voters chose Trump, with 89% voting for Hillary Clinton. Last year, CNN’s Harry Enten found that African American support had increased slightly, with an average of 12% approving of Trump’s job performance and 84% disapproving. A March survey by NBC News/Wall Street Journal, however, showed 88% of African Americans disapprove of the president.

Which is to say: if Trump has increased his support among some ethnic minority voters, it is only slightly.

Abdul-Malik Walker, from Williamsport, was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat to shield himself from the sun.

“I like what Trump is doing for African Americans,” Walker said.

“Even in businesses, for African American ownership. I just think there’s a lot of opportunity for everybody.”

Walker, 35, was released from prison at the beginning of the month and said he got a job – he works as an HVAC technician – almost immediately.

“Under the previous president a lot of people were going home to nothing.”

Walker liked Trump before he became president, through The Apprentice and Trump’s regular appearances on the Howard Stern radio show. He voted for Obama in 2008, but will opt for Trump in 2020.

“Anybody who pays attention I think will vote for Trump if they’re a minority. Especially African Americans, because Biden, you know, was part of the crime bill in 1994 with mass incarceration mandatory minimums. And coming from prison that’s something that I don’t like. I would never vote for Biden based on that.”

Biden helped write the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act when he was a senator from Delaware. The bill earmarked $8.7bn for building new prisons, and introduced a “three-strikes” provision that mandated life imprisonment without parole for certain people convicted of violent crimes.

Experts say it contributed to an increase in incarceration and in the length of prison sentences, despite Biden’s claim, just last week, to the contrary.

Despite a seemingly problematic track record – in the 1970s Biden also opposed busing students to different districts, which aimed to achieve racial balance in schools – polling suggests the former vice-president currently has overwhelming support among non-white voters.

And while Walker is a full-throated Trump supporter, it seems unlikely that his friends and family, at least, will be won over. Walker showed the Guardian some of the texts he had received after posting a photo of himself in a Make America Great Again hat.

“You acting like Kanye West,” read a message from his cousin. Walker’s sister had threatened to disown him – he said she was joking – and another family member had replied with a facepalm emoji.

One text said simply: “What the hell’s going on here?”