LAREDO, Texas — There was an audible gasp from the crowd as Donald Trump’s 757 lifted off the tarmac.

“Oh my God. Wow,” said Gina Gil, 48, after an excited shriek, reaching for her 11-year-old-nephew. “I think it’s a historic moment, ma’am. Seriously, I really do.”

Supporters reach out to greet Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump as he leaves a stop to speak to supporters and the media in Laredo, Texas, on Thursday. The Associated Press

Gil was referring to Trump’s visit Thursday to Laredo, Texas, a small city on the U.S.-Mexico border where the Republican presidential candidate spent less than an hour touring the border, bragged to reporters about the danger he faced, proclaimed Hispanics love him, and stopped traffic with a presidential-sized motorcade.

Yet beyond the spectacle The Donald seems to create wherever he goes, the billionaire businessman’s visit exposed evidence of a divided community whose overwhelmingly Hispanic population both decried Trump as racist and cheered his hardline immigration views.

Interviews during and after the whirlwind tour with more than a dozen local residents underscored the danger Trump represents to Republicans’ relationship with Hispanic voters and his appeal to a vocal segment of frustrated voters, many Hispanics among them, who see a glaring problem on the nation’s southern border that requires attention.

Jessica Gonzalez, 79, a retired housewife who was born and raised in Laredo, said she’d watched as the city she’d grown up in had changed, with restaurants replaced with Mexican food and new people coming in.

“I think he’s right,” she said in the parking lot of a local CVS. “All we have is people from foreign countries. … It’s not like it used to be.”

Gonzalez – a Democrat – and her husband used to travel across the border frequently to shop and for entertainment, but are now afraid to cross because of violence from the drug cartels.

“I want to go down and say: Donald Trump, you’re on fire in Laredo! Because everybody feels what you think!” she said.

Outside Obregon’s Mexican Restaurant, Enrique Harrington Ramon, 75, said he felt Spanish-speaking immigrants “take advantage of us” in Laredo, and said people are responding to what Trump says “because it’s the truth.”

“I am sick of walking into a store and hearing ‘en que le puede ayudar?’ What country are we in?” he said.

Others in this growing city of about 250,000, where 95.6 percent of the population identified as Hispanic or Latino in 2010, lashed out at Trump, who described some Mexican immigrants in the country illegally as “rapists” and “criminals” during his announcement speech last month and has refused to apologize.

“I wish he wouldn’t come down here,” said Raul Gonzalez, 65, a retired trailer and truck mechanic who was born and raised in Laredo.

“He’s very disrespectful to Latinos,” Gonzalez said.

Laredo-born Tony Flores, 82, who was wearing a cap that identified him as a Korean War veteran, said of Trump: “He is poisonous. He is hatred.”

While Hispanic voters along the U.S.-Texas border have a unique perspective, the vast majority of the growing demographic supports more forgiving immigration policies that would allow a pathway to citizenship or permanent residency for immigrants in the country illegally, according to recent polls.

Trump, meanwhile, is viewed favorably by just 28 percent of Americans and unfavorably by 58 percent, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted earlier in the month. About one-third of whites, but just 16 percent of Hispanics and 10 percent of blacks, have a favorable view of Trump.

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