Espaillat: Trump has ‘permeated this toxic environment’

The freshman congressman, the first formerly undocumented immigrant elected, thinks President Trump doesn’t understand their experience. Adriano Espaillat remembers hearing gunfire nearby when he was 10 years old, back in the Dominican Republic. But that, he says, wasn't as scary as the men in trench coats and glasses his grandmother warned him to look out for during the months he spent living in New York on an expired visa. “I guess that’s the description of a spy or a detective,” Espailllat told me, as we met at Bullfeathers to speak for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast. “Or an immigration officer.”