A Trump voter is in shock after the president’s ongoing effort to conduct the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history impacted him personally.
In an interview with CBS News published Thursday, Texas businessman John Gannon expressed regret for supporting President Donald Trump in the 2024 election after federal immigration officials last month detained his fiancé, a Venezuelan immigrant named Yasmin Suarez Reyes.
Gannon said that he expected that Trump’s mass deportation campaign would only go after criminals who are unlawfully in the U.S., but instead found “they are picking up law-abiding citizens” and “destroying families, jobs.”
Gannon, the owner of over 1,000 billboards in the US and of a hotel and restaurant in Mexico, explained that Suarez Reyes was detained in July by multiple US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after passing through security at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
According to Gannon, the ICE officers “swarmed” Suarez Reyes and “wrestled her off into a car” without providing an explanation.
“This is like the Gestapo,” Gannon said.
Anne Kennedy, an attorney representing Suarez Reyes, told CBS that her client entered the US legally and had a pending asylum case and had been able to get a work permit and a Texas driver’s license before she was detained. Kennedy also noted that Suarez Reyes had no criminal record.
“For almost two weeks now, she has been in a physical jail cell,” said Kennedy, “when she has done nothing more than follow the laws of the United States and do what our immigration laws allow her to do.”
When asked by CBS what message he had for Trump, Gannon encouraged the president to “go after the criminals” but “leave the mom and pops and the kids alone.”
“Man, he’s destroying families,” Gannon added.
Some critics expressed little empathy for Gannon’s situation, however, given Trump’s decades of racist attacks on immigrants.
“You voted for Trump to do this to other people,” commented journalist Molly Knight. “You’re mad because he’s not doing this to ‘the right people,’ as defined by you.”
Election forecaster Rachel Bitecofer was similarly unsympathetic, and sarcastically summed up Gannon’s position as, “I only wanted other people’s relatives deported!”
Gun safety activist Shannon Watts questioned why Gannon needed to be personally impacted by Trump’s policies to turn against them.
“The most horrible things shouldn’t have to happen to you in order to oppose them,” Watts wrote.
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