Trump Bashes Arab Americans. Here’s Why Some Like Him Anyway.

To better understand Donald Trump’s surging appeal among immigrant voters a friend suggested that I visit a particular corner of Staten Island, where an astonishingly diverse population, clustered around a set of minority-owned businesses, has recently emerged on a stretch of Hylan Boulevard.

This was Trump country, if not in purest distillation, then in a formidable iteration of it: The former president won Staten Island by 15 percentage points when he ran against Joe Biden, leading by more than 50 points in some precincts. But the whole of Staten Island no longer conformed to the accompanying stereotype. Between 2008 and 2022, according to Census data, the white population around this section of Hylan Boulevard declined from 75 percent to 60. And there have been significant changes even in the last two years. The question now was whether devotion to the former president in a MAGA-centric part of the world was undermined by an infusion of people conceivably alienated by his racist rhetoric.

That rhetoric dominated Sunday’s rally at Madison Square Garden, where one speaker called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” and a litany of casual disparagement targeted African Americans, Jews and Palestinians. The day before, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris holding an advantage of 39 percentage points over Mr. Trump in New York City, an overwhelming edge that nevertheless stood in significantly low contrast to Democratic support in 2020, when Mr. Biden won the city by 53 points.

The stretch of Hylan Boulevard running through the adjoining neighborhoods of Dongan Hills, Grant City and Midland Beach could easily be mistaken for parts of Queens, given its ethnic range. Chinese, Filipino, Nigerian, Lebanese and Egyptian immigrants have been joined in recent years by an increasing number of Palestinian and Yemeni families. What might seem like an unusual convergence of opinion took hold.

In Dongan Hills, where Trump signs line the front lawns of single-family houses, the Muslim American Society of Staten Island opened a $7 million community center in March. Not far off, two Palestinian restaurants exist within a few blocks of each other. One of them, Ayat, is part of a chain with a branch in Allentown, Pa. Another smaller one, Al Aqsa, is a falafel house named for the mosque in Haram al-Sharif and also quite popular. A sign on the front door announces support for the Palestinian cause.