'Troubling message': Trump's White House still doesn't have Spanish language website year into office

The White House website has yet to produce Spanish-language content more than a year into Donald Trump's presidency despite promises to develop one. After Trump took office in January 2017, Spanish articles were removed from the official website.

At the time, the then White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the content was deleted by the new administration but its IT staff were "working overtime" to develop a new website. Six months later, White House director of media affairs Helen Aguirre Ferre said in July that a Spanish language website was expected to go live by the end of 2017.

However, Ferre has since declined to confirm whether a Spanish language website will ever come to fruition.

"We continue to work on improving the White House website providing important content in English pertaining to the initiatives and policies the Trump administration is undertaking," Ferre said in an email to The Associated Press.

Javier Palomarez, president of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the absence of a White House website in Spanish sends "a very troubling message."

"There are over 4 million Hispanic-American entrepreneurs and business people in this country, many of whom are receptive to the administration's pro-business agenda," Palomarez told the AP. "If they made even a little effort to communicate and engage with the Latino community, perhaps they would win a few of them over."

The move marks a visible departure from the past two administrations who added Spanish language content to the official White House website. Spanish content was first added to the site during George W. Bush's presidency. During Barack Obama's tenure, articles in Spanish on various key issues such as immigration, banking, health and more were also included.

Latinos make up the largest minority group in the US with nearly one in five people speaking Spanish in the US.

The White House does maintain a Spanish-language Twitter account, @LaCasaBlanca, that was created in January 2017. However, it is not nearly as active as its English equivalent @WhiteHouse. So far, the Spanish language handle has posted just over 200 tweets as compared to over 3,200 posts by its English counterpart.

This decision also puts the US behind other major countries that offer information in Spanish, including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the AP noted.

Trump's relationship with Latino voters has been fraught with controversy throughout his presidential campaign as well as his first year in office. In September 2015, Trump criticised Republican rival Jeb Bush for answering questions from the media in both English and Spanish.

"I like Jeb, he's a nice man," Trump said at the time. "But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States."

Trump has also claimed many Mexican immigrants were "criminals" and "rapists".

The news also comes amid the heated debate in Congress on immigration and the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme. Trump has also called any solution without his long-promised wall on the Mexican border a "total waste of time."

Meanwhile, social media users had some thoughts on the absence of a Spanish language White House page: