How a South Carolina town’s experience with immigration helps explain the rise of Donald Trump

SALUDA, S.C. — Strangers don’t walk into Lunch ‘N Treats restaurant very often. When they do, it’s as if a silent alarm goes off. Diners look up from their plates of chicken, rice and gravy, and turn their heads and stare.

That’s what happened on a rainy Friday in November when two visitors, a reporter and photographer, arrived. The restaurant was packed at lunchtime. The all-Black staff bustled about serving sweet tea in foam cups to the all-White customers.

Until a decade and a half ago, nearly all of the residents in this rural South Carolina town 50 miles east of Columbia, the capital, were either Black or White. But Latinos now make up a third of the town’s 3,600 residents, outnumbering Whites, at 25 percent, and closing in on Blacks, at 39 percent.

In fact, Saluda has one of the fastest-growing Latino populations in South Carolina, the state with the second-fastest-growing Latino population in the country, behind Alabama, according to the Pew Research Center. Latinos come mainly to work in the agriculture and poultry industries.

And just like when strangers enter Lunch ‘N Treats, the newcomers have gotten noticed.

“The Mexicans are gaining fast. They are gaining fast,” said one lifelong Saluda resident, a 77-year-old man named Aubrey who asked that his last name not be published because he recognized his opinions are controversial and could provoke a backlash in the community.

The rapid growth of the Latino population has raised fears, especially among older generations, that Latino immigrants, some of whom have entered the country illegally, are altering life in Saluda, and not necessarily for the better.

Longtime residents complain about Latino immigrants displacing workers at local poultry plants, sometimes by using false papers, living in dilapidated mobile homes, and opening churches in vacant buildings in the town’s historic business district.

A website titled “What illegal aliens have done to Saluda, SC!” is filled with photographs of trash strewn outside mobile homes, Latino workers entering and exiting a local poultry plant, and “gang” graffiti on walls.

Those attitudes illustrate how rhetoric on immigration has helped some Republican presidential candidates, especially real-estate mogul Donald Trump, gain traction in states like South Carolina. His message has resonated with people fearful about the nation’s changing demographic makeup, concerned about immigrants competing with Americans for jobs and driving down wages, and suspicious of the federal government’s ability or willingness to confront the problem.

Trump, who is coming off a commanding victory in the Feb. 9 New Hampshire Primary, has promised to deport all of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. He also has pledged to build a giant wall along the border with Mexico to stop more from entering illegally.

In three South Carolina polls conducted in January, Trump held double-digit leads over his nearest rival, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another foe of "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants. Cruz upset Trump in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, setting the stage for a battle royal in South Carolina's "first in the South" primary on Feb. 20.

Since 1980, the Republican candidate who has won two out of the first three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina has almost always gone on to become the GOP nominee.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen Marco Rubio, who stumbled in New Hampshire, is hoping for a comeback.

Rubio, of Florida, was part of the bipartisan group of senators, known at the "Gang of Eight," who crafted a sweeping 2013 immigration bill that would have given undocumented immigrants a chance to legalize their status and eventually become citizens.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the No. 2 finisher in New Hampshire, also are hoping for a strong-enough showing to become the clear GOP establishment alternative to Trump and Cruz.

But Bush, Kasich and Rubio, all associated with more moderate immigration positions, are battling from behind.

“I like Donald Trump’s method,” Aubrey said. “I like (his idea to) build that wall and have an entrance in and out and the only way you go through is that passage.”

An unwanted downtown revival

Saluda is the county seat of Saluda County. The red brick Saluda County Courthouse rises majestically from the town square.

It used to be a booming textile town. But all the big textile plants closed decades ago and moved to Latin America. The closings were part of a wave of closures in the 1980s that swept through North and South Carolina.

In Saluda alone, some 1,800 textile jobs were lost, said Tom Brooks, the town administrator.

Now, the once-thriving historic business district is lined with one vacant storefront after another. About 80 percent of the storefronts are empty, Brooks said.

At least a half-dozen of the vacant buildings have been turned into Hispanic churches in recent years, further hurting the business district, Brooks said.

“They are non-retail, non-job-producing,” Brooks said, “which is another challenge for us to keep our downtown going.”

The prime properties are off the tax rolls, yet municipal “services still have to be provided,” Brooks said. “By all means we are here to support churches, but it is a drain on resources as well.”

After the textile mills closed, some Saluda landowners converted vacant lots into mobile-home parks and began renting old trailers to the Latino newcomers.

In 2007, the town passed an ordinance that bans older mobile homes, but many of the existing parks are exempt. The town also has stepped up code enforcement to “keep the mobile-home parks cleaner and make sure there aren’t couches out in the front yards,” Brooks said.

“The overall first impression when you drive by a lot of them, it’s not a good impression,” Brooks said. “So, yes, it provides housing for a lot of people, but it’s also going to drive a lot of other folks away because they don’t want to locate next to that.”

Still, there are signs of an economic revival taking root downtown, fueled by the fast-growing Latino population.

Several Mexican restaurants have opened on the outskirts of town. And on Church Street, across from a monument honoring William Travis and James Bonham, two Saluda County natives who died in the Alamo, a taqueria and panaderia now sell plates of tacos and Mexican bread.

'We are going to be crowded out'

Back at Lunch ‘N Treats, Aubrey scowled when asked how he felt about Latinos making gains in Saluda.

“Deadly against it,” he said. “I am deadly against it.”

He owns a small cattle farm on the outskirts of town. That day at Lunch ‘N Treats, he was sitting in his usual spot at a side table with his lunch companion, 82-year-old Jack Atkinson, retired from the automobile industry.

Between bites, the two Republicans shared their feelings about how the changes brought about by the newcomers have shaped their views on immigration heading into the South Carolina presidential caucuses.

Unlike Aubrey, Atkinson doesn’t support Trump’s idea of building a giant wall between the U.S. and Mexico. “It reminds me too much of East Germany,” he said. Instead, he would like to see the United States use more technology to secure the border.

He also doesn’t think deporting all of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the answer.

“It could be done, but it would be a mess,” Atkinson said. “I don’t think there is any reason to do that.”

And while Aubrey wants to see immigration curtailed, Atkinson believes the United States needs immigrants to grow, as long as they come legally.

“Our country is built on immigration,” Atkinson said. “If we don’t take in any immigrants we will end up like Europe, where their populations are shrinking, or Japan.”

But the two had plenty of concerns, and they said those concerns were driving them to support Republican candidates with tough stances on illegal immigration.

Aubrey feels like Latinos are taking over Saluda.

“They are not as neat as we are,” he said. “They don’t take care of things. They are junky, trashy like. Their culture is not like ours.”

He’s noticed many of the Latinos in Saluda have larger families. “When you see one (Latina) girl ... you see a row of little ducks behind,” Aubrey said.

“We are going to be overpopulated and they are buying up everything,” he said. “We are going to be crowded out.”

He wants the government to shut the door on immigrants and then only allow in a small number.

“You just can’t keep opening the door and just let them keep coming and coming,” Aubrey said. “We are going to be worse than it is in Mexico in a few years.”

Atkinson, meanwhile, doesn’t like what he sees happening downtown, with Hispanics buying properties in the historic business district and turning them into churches. He pointed out the window to a white building with a green roof across the street. It used to be a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Now it’s a Hispanic church.

To Atkinson, the churches, and their services in Spanish, suggest Latinos don’t have regard for the town’s history and are not integrating.

“They have not assimilated. That’s the big problem,” Atkinson said. “If you are going to have immigrants, they have got to assimilate. They got to learn the language and they have got to be part of the community and take an active interest in everything that goes on.”

Unlike in Sioux Center, Iowa, where residents recognize the state’s agriculture industry depends on immigrants, legal and illegal, in Saluda many Latinos say there has been little effort to reach out to them and help them integrate.

Sioux Center, Iowa: How a small Republican town grew to love immigrants

The way Atkinson sees it, Americans shouldn’t be catering to immigrants in Spanish.

“It just makes me furious when I call some doctor’s office on the phone and the first thing they want to know is do I want to speak in English or Spanish. I mean, I am not living in Québec. I am not living in Germany. I am living in the USA,” Atkinson said.

Finding jobs, losing jobs

Luis del Valle stopped by El Mexicano grocery store off Batesburg Highway to wire money to relatives in Veracruz, Mexico. The 38-year-old del Valle said he moved to Saluda 15 years ago.

Like many of the Latino immigrants here, he works in the poultry industry. He disinfects machines at Amick Farms, a chicken processing plant five miles east of Saluda, and the area’s largest employer. There is another plant, Gentry’s Poultry Co., in nearby Ward.

South Carolina ranks ninth among the top chicken-producing states and sixth among top turkey-producing states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We come here to do manual labor,” del Valle said, huddled under the eaves outside El Mexicano to avoid the rain. He said he is a legal resident. “If the Latinos didn’t come here, some of these towns would die and ... there wouldn’t be any (new) businesses.”

Before Latinos started coming to Saluda, African-Americans mostly worked in the poultry plants, said Ryan Hall, who is Black.

The 34-year-old has lived in Saluda all his life. His mother owns Lunch ‘N Treats restaurant.

“I remember when all of them first started coming around,” Hall said, sitting at a table inside the restaurant where he serves drinks and helps in the kitchen. “I don’t have a problem with them but I know a lot of people around here have a big problem with them because a lot of the Hispanics, they will work for less money and that's what was going on at a lot of the plants, like chicken plants and stuff like that.”

He said many Black workers feel they were pushed out of their jobs by supervisors who favored Hispanic workers. A cousin who works at one of the poultry plants said he often heard supervisors say, “It takes three Blacks to do one Mexican’s job.”

In the past, undocumented immigrants had no trouble getting jobs using fake documents, said Hector Ortiz. He owns an insurance and income-tax firm in town that caters mostly to Spanish-speakers.

In one high-profile case in 2008, federal immigration authorities raided the House of Raeford Farms poultry processing plant in Greenville, S.C., after an investigation determined hundreds of workers had submitted false documents to gain employment.

South Carolina passed a law that year requiring employers to verify whether their employees were legally entitled to work by screening them through a federal electronic system called E-Verify.

The law has made it much tougher for immigrants in the country illegally to get jobs with fake papers, and many have since moved away, Ortiz said.

Myth or fact? 6 things to know about immigration

Hall said the law reopened the doors for Black workers at the poultry plants after many undocumented workers lost their jobs.

Even so, not all African-Americans feel like Latino immigrants are taking away jobs.

“It’s kind of divided,” he said. “A lot of them are glad to see them go and a lot of them don’t have any problems at all. You find a lot of them are really, really good people. They are pretty much just like us. They are just trying to make a living. It’s better for them over here.”

A generational difference in attitudes

On a recent Sunday morning, about a hundred worshipers packed a previously vacant office building that had been converted into a church, the Iglesia de Dios. The worshipers stood singing hymns at the top of their lungs with their hands raised while a band played guitars and drums.

The pastor, Dionisio Rosales, 41, sat in the front row, next to his wife, Marta, 35, and their two children, Abisai, 14, and Jaasele, 8.

Rosales said he came to the United States about 17 years ago from Veracruz, Mexico. He works as a landscaper in Saluda. He said the church opened about three years ago and the 30 families who attend are from Mexico or Guatemala.

“We are looking for people who need God,” Rosales said as the noonday service was about to start. “We are also grateful for the privilege to be in this country.”

Maybe so, but Latinos have not always been treated well in Saluda, said Ortiz, the insurance business owner.

How we got here: The many attempts to reform immigration, secure the border

As a native of Puerto Rico, Ortiz is a U.S. citizen. He moved to Saluda about eight years ago.

And at that time, Ortiz said, it was also common for local police to conduct “stakeouts” outside Hispanic churches to target Latinos since many of them were undocumented and therefore didn’t have driver’s licenses.

The police were “just waiting for people to get out and follow them,” Ortiz said. “If you have the dividing line and if your wheel just stepped a little bit over the line” — Ortiz clapped his hands —“you got pulled over.”

He said “hundreds” of his undocumented clients were arrested and fined for driving without a license.

Ortiz said police no longer conduct the stakeouts, and Kes Holmes, who became police chief in September 2013, said he has never heard complaints about officers profiling Latinos.

As time has passed, many Saluda residents have started to warm to Latinos, especially younger generations who grew up with them.

“In this kind of area, it’s the people in their 50s to 80s, they don’t like it,” said 23-year-old Kenny Shealy, as he waited for a haircut at a barbershop on Main Street. “But you ain’t going to stop it either way. You might as well let it be what it is.”

Brooks, the town administrator, agreed.

“That population is here to stay and it’s growing and the folks who can’t vote now certainly are going to be able to vote in a couple of years,” he said.

He helps coach a recreational youth soccer team. Half the players are Hispanic, he said, and the sport has grown in popularity as the area’s Latino population has grown.

He sees White, Black and Hispanic parents hanging out on the sidelines while their children play on the field.

“We are all out there with our kids having a good time,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is looking at the color of anybody’s skin.”

Editor’s note

The 2016 presidential election will be decisive when it comes to the nation’s broken immigration system. The campaign has again reminded us of the powerful emotions the immigration debate can provoke. The Arizona Republic sent reporters and photographers to five influential presidential-nominating states to find out what this campaign season will mean for the future of American immigration.

One Nation, which draws on the combined power of the nationwide USA Today Network, will stop in Phoenix on March 21 for a discussion of immigration with experts from here and across the nation. Get your tickets now for food, beer, bands and knowledge at onenation.usatoday.com and continue reading The Arizona Republic’s coverage of the issue at immigration.azcentral.com.

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