HERMISTON -- Jose Garcia, I have to say, threw me for a loop.
Garcia heads the Hispanic Advisory Committee in Hermiston, a town that celebrates the Latino community like few others in Oregon.
At this, the vibrant edge of Umatilla County, Hispanics make up 50 percent of the students in the Hermiston School District, and are the heart of the local work force.
George Murdock, the county commission chair, is blunt: "Without labor, documented or undocumented, our agriculture economy is in deep, deep trouble. I'm dumbfounded as to why no one is paying attention."
Garcia is certainly up to speed. He moved here 28 years ago. Raised three children. Launched New Horizons, a drug and alcohol treatment center.
And in the visceral reaction to President Trump's rhetoric on Mexican rapists, billion-dollar walls and "bad hombres," I had Garcia pegged as the point of the spear.
Not even close.
His three children? "They're not happy with the president," Garcia, 51, says, and they can't wait to vote their frustration. "There's a lot of drama. All the things he's done. All the things that aren't true."
But Garcia is strangely optimistic. He isn't convinced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is any more active in Umatilla County than it used to be. He doesn't remember immigration reform in the eight years Barack Obama lived in the White House.
And he believes he speaks for many Hispanics in Eastern Oregon when he argues that only one presidential candidate last year had an engaging message.
"The Latino community doesn't trust the government," Garcia says. "That's why they fled the country (Mexico). There was never justice. Their voice was never heard.
"When they see an independent candidate, saying, 'I'm not associated with these clowns. I own a business.' That's what they look for. That's the little glimpse of hope they have."
Hope - for liberty, happiness and better lives for their children - that somehow endures amid the bluster over Muslim bans, terrorist refugees, and incoherent health-care plans.
Garcia grew up in Yakima, one of nine children. The family lived on a dairy, where his father worked a 3 a.m.-2 p.m. shift seven days a week, and too often drank himself to sleep.
"It was always work, work, work," Garcia says. "When you always need to be there for the cows, it's the never-ending story. I can understand why my dad drank."
He and his wife moved to Hermiston in 1989. "I came looking for a better life," Garcia says, and he found it in a town that's grown dramatically since a prison, the Walmart distribution center and pivot irrigation arrived in Umatilla County in the late '90s.
Dennis and Anne Doherty, with their son, Ben, and a mellow bull, on Ben's 25-acre farm To understand why Hispanics have assimilated so successfully in Hermiston, there's no more calming explanation than the Dohertys, a family I wrote about in 2012.
In 1984, Dennis and Anne Doherty invited the first of eight Mexican exchange students, Juan Carrillo, to live here with them and their four children.
They were so committed to bridging the divide between the two countries that all four Doherty kids eventually spent their freshman years of high school living with Carrillo's family in Veracruz. The Dohertys' two oldest daughters married Latinos, and half of their 12 grandchildren are Mexican-American.
As Dennis Doherty notes, Trump's derision toward Mexican immigrants doesn't play at this end of the county.
"If it's attention you want" on that score, Doherty says, "the last place you'll get attention is Hermiston."
Tienes papeles? In this town, it's rude to ask.
Yet, Garcia and the Dohertys realize just how many Latinos are unnerved by the unpredictability of this administration. They shop later at night. They worry about the police car in the rear-view mirror. They wince over the headlines.
Says Ben Doherty, who's married to one of several school teachers in the Doherty family, "We see things and the way it affects these kids, and it hurts."
What then, explains, Garcia's optimism?
"When I talk to people who've been in the United States illegally for 20 or 30 years," he says, "they understand what the president is doing. 'You know what, Jose? We understand the laws. That's why we came here.'
"But now that they've been here for 30 years, they want a chance to stay here. There have to be some exceptions. They've worked hard all their life. They have kids who were born here. They served in the military. These guys are not 'bad hombres.' They are part of the economy."
And they are desperate to believe they can work their way into the good graces, such as they are, of Donald Trump.
-- Steve Duin
stephen.b.duin@gmail.com