Parroting Trump's xenophobic rhetoric, Kemp has vowed to use his Ford pick-up truck "just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself".

In Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won the Democratic primaries to become the state's first African American gubernatorial nominee, mobilising support among young people, liberals and progressives, and white, Latino and black voters.

Gillum promotes gun control and a repeal of Florida's deadly "stand your ground" self-defence law, a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for all, corporate tax increases to pay for public education, and the abolishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Republican, Trump-endorsed governor candidate, Ron DeSantis, stirred controversy by using a racial slur in reference to Gillum's politics.

This, as the current governor Rick Scott - a climate-change denier and darling of the pro-gun lobby who made Florida the "Gunshine State" due to its lax firearm laws - runs for the US Senate. Scott has received Trump's blessing but attempted to distance himself from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and from the president, also pandering to Latino voters with a Spanish-language ad conveying the message that he is not Trump.

Latino voters, representing the fastest growing segment of the US population, are poised to influence elections in a number of states. In light of the deaths of nearly 3,000 people last year in Puerto Rico due to government inaction following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, mobilised and displaced Puerto Rican voters in Florida, New York and New Jersey could tip the balance in the midterms.

Meanwhile, the separation of nearly 3,000 undocumented migrant children from their families due to a white supremacist "zero tolerance" policy at the Mexican border, and the revocation of citizenship and passports of Hispanic American citizens, are issues impacting Latinos in the border state of Texas.

With its minority-white, non-Latino population still under Republican control, Texas is about to send its first two Latina legislators to Congress, Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar. Further, Democrat Beto O'Rourke could unseat conservative Senator Ted Cruz.

Hailed as the Left's answer to Trump, O'Rourke has attacked the US president for his immigration policy and defended American football players who "take a knee" in protest of police violence.

Amid the Islamophobic policies of the Trump administration, including travel bans on people from Muslim countries, Congress prepares to welcome its first Muslim-American women members - Rashida Tlaib , a daughter of Palestinian immigrants from Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali-American who fled the Somali civil war and lived in a Kenyan refugee camp.