Latino activist group to launch multimillion-dollar voter registration drive: report

A Latino activist coalition group on Thursday will launch a multimillion-dollar effort to register Hispanic people to vote, according to NBC News.

The voter registration drive, which is being launched by a coalition group called Voto Latino, was prompted by President Trump’s previous policy of separating children from parents when families crossed the border illegally, NBC News reported.

{mosads}The campaign will feature “guerrilla marketing” and a new app that allows users to register to vote on their phones, according to NBC News.

“We are basically connecting the Latino network in a way we have not seen,” Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino president, told NBC News. “Everybody is coming together because there is a level of persecution we’ve never seen.”

NBC News reported that the coalition was created over a span of six days in June, when 40 organizations and Hollywood stars protested a child detention tent city in Tornillo, Texas.

“A lot of this campaign is going to be about educating our young people and sharpening their tools so they understand how to represent their family,” said Wilmer Valderrama, an actor and Voto Latino board member, according to NBC.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed a “zero tolerance” policy at the border that referred everyone who crossed the border illegally for criminal prosecution. As a result, there was a significant increase in adults who were placed into custody to await legal proceedings while their children were sent to separate juvenile facilities.   

Trump in June signed an executive order ending the policy, but hundreds of children still remain separated from their parents, some of whom were deported.