Three years ago, before Donald Trump won his second term, I posed a question to Latino Republicans about their party’s growing nativist wing: How willing are you to break ranks with your party on immigration and place your community over partisan politics?
Now one of those lawmakers, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., has answered with a campaign ad that appears to break ranks with Trump.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says to the camera, both in English and Spanish. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
In the first 14 months of this administration, immigration arrests have more than tripled in Florida compared with the final months of the Biden administration.
Salazar, an Emmy-winning journalist turned three-term House member, is not just any Republican distancing herself from an unpopular president. She represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District, which includes Miami’s Little Havana. The district is close to 75% Latino and has a history of supporting staunchly conservative causes, including fighting socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. In 2024, Trump won close to 60% of Florida’s Latino vote and became the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami. Salazar’s district played a key role, with Trump winning 57% of the vote.
Yet in Trump’s second term, his cruel immigration policies are directly affecting the very communities Salazar represents. In the first 14 months of this administration, immigration arrests have more than tripled in Florida compared with the final months of the Biden administration. That makes Florida one of the top states cooperating with the White House’s mass deportation agenda.
In Doral, just north of Salazar’s district, local businesses report sales declines as high as 70% because of increased immigration enforcement. A Miami Herald poll of Cubans and Cuban Americans in South Florida found that 68% disapprove of increased deportations of Cubans without criminal records and that 81% support letting Cubans legally migrate to the U.S.
These data points go a long way toward explaining why Salazar is making this ad in a district she won by 20 points in 2024. She understands that what might not have been an issue when Trump came back to office has now come to her own community.
Such a sharp shift, though, has its skeptics. Unsurprisingly, Salazar’s Democratic opponent, Eliott Rodriguez — a former local TV anchor who is also Cuban American — was blunt in his response to the ad, saying that Salazar “is lying, again!”
The Latino “movable middle” is still not convinced that Democrats have been effective in countering Trump’s messaging and policies.
“She’s been a pathetic rubber stamp for Trump while they made D-27 unaffordable, slashed health care, terrorized immigrants and shoved constituents into Alligator Alcatraz,” Rodriguez said in a post on X, accompanied by his own social video. “Now, before the election, she pretends to fight Trump.”
Yes, Salazar was a crucial vote in ensuring that Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed the House last year. That law made Immigration and Customs Enforcement the country’s highest-funded law enforcement agency, at about $85 billion. Salazar defended the Florida detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” saying it “met the highest standards” for such facilities. So Rodriguez should be cynical and push back.
But in this case, the partisan argument may be too simple.
Republicans are hemorrhaging support with Latinos in congressional races, and Trump’s support continues to nosedive with working-class Latinos — which is directly tied to immigration policy. In that context, Salazar’s change of tune speaks to a more complex issue. Whether it’s Miami or other parts of the country where they have electoral power, Latinos can drive change, and Salazar knows it. Leaders who genuinely put community first and partisanship last at least have a fighting chance. That is what Salazar is banking on.
The same week Salazar released her ad, new data from UnidosUS on undecided Latino voters found a “movable middle” of Latino voters who are undecided or independent, or who crossed party lines during the 2024 election.
“The analysis finds this group is anxious about the economy, skeptical of both parties, and is less likely to hear from candidates than Hispanic voters overall,” UnidosUS noted in an accompanying press release. “This group makes up roughly 38% of the Hispanic electorate, which has a significant presence in 12 of the 37 competitive U.S. House districts that will decide control of Congress.”
The poll also noted that “among self-identified Trump voters in this group, 46% would not support him if they had to do it over again, and that number climbs to 57% among those who crossed party lines for him in 2024.”
This is where Salazar needs to play to win her fourth term. The Latino “movable middle” is still not convinced Democrats have been effective in countering Trump’s messaging and policies. Her constituents will decide whether her break with Trump came is too late. But Latino voters everywhere are better served when their representatives speak out against cruelty — even when they initially voted for that cruelty. Because right now, Latino and immigrant communities are under attack and they need all the allies they can get.
The post Why this Florida Republican just went on the record criticizing Trump’s immigration policies appeared first on MS NOW.
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