Hialeah mayor gets fined for multiple code violations at her home
As she campaigns to become Hialeah’s next elected mayor, Interim Mayor Jacqueline Garcia-Roves has been fined $250 by the city’s Building and Code Compliance Department for multiple violations at her personal residence, raising questions about whether the city’s top official is following the very regulations she is tasked with enforcing.
Records from the Hialeah Building and Code Compliance Department show Garcia-Roves’s property is currently under an active code violation for “building without a permit.” The inspection report lists the violations as “addition, awning, re-roof, fence, and columns” and includes 10 photographs documenting various structures and modifications made to the property.
The images highlight several features of the property, including a boat cover, a canopy, two white fences, hurricane shutters, and rolling gates on both the left and right sides of the residence. Additionally, Miami-Dade Property Appraiser records, included in Hialeah Building and Code Compliance Department files related to Garcia-Roves’s fine for city code violations, show two roof extensions. One appears to be an enclosed home addition with plumbing ventilation stacks, likely serving as vents for a kitchen or bathroom, while the other is constructed from aluminum.
City records indicate that no permits have been filed for any of these structures, which remain central to the ongoing code enforcement case.
Garcia-Roves attributed the additions to prior ownership, stating that her father and mother purchased the home in 1985. However, records from her mayoral campaign statement indicate that she has lived in the property since 1982.
“I reside in the home with my husband, our three children, and my mother. I have made no renovations to the property,” Garcia-Roves said in a written statement to the Miami Herald. “Like every other resident of Hialeah, I will comply and remedy any violation on the property that may have occurred prior to my ownership.”
However, a 2011 image of the property from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser obtained by the Herald shows a different fence and gate than those currently in place, along with different exterior columns, no hurricane shutters and a porch gate. Meanwhile, Google Street View images spanning from 2007-22, reveal substantial exterior modifications made to the home decades after her family acquired it.
Garcia-Roves became the official owner of the property in June 2019, when her mother, Tania, transferred ownership to her via a quit-claim deed following the death of Garcia-Roves’s father, according to records from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Later that year, in November 2019, she was elected to the Hialeah City Council and was reelected unopposed in 2023. City records show that no permits were ever filed for the improvements made to the property—neither under Garcia-Roves’s name nor her parents’.
Garcia-Roves is the first woman to hold the office of Hialeah mayor, serving in an interim capacity since April after Esteban “Steve” Bovo stepped down to become a lobbyist. She is now running for a full mayoral term in a contested election with five candidates. The situation raises broader questions about transparency, accountability, and the example set by Hialeah’s top official.
A week ago when the violations were exposed at a council meeting by a resident, Garcia-Roves denied to the Herald that she had made any unauthorized changes, calling the accusations “fake news” orchestrated by her political opponents, particularly supporters of one of her rivals in the mayoral race, Bryan Calvo.
“This is fake news created by employees of my opponent,” Garcia-Roves said.
Garcia-Roves maintains that no expansions have taken place. “I haven’t done any expansion. I’ve lived in that house since I was a child and inherited it from my late father,” she said after a City Council meeting last week.
The Herald first submitted a public records request regarding Garcia-Roves’s property in July 2025. At that time, the Building and Code Compliance Department confirmed the property had been cited in the past, dating back to 2013, when code enforcement cited a violation involving a Freightliner “super truck” reportedly owned by Garcia-Roves’s husband. That citation predates her political career but points to a longer history of code-related issues at the address.
Notably, the city’s permit records show no documented approvals, ever, for any structural improvements at the home.
While city residents are routinely penalized for unpermitted work, particularly in Hialeah Heights, known as the Annex to the west of I-75, it remains unclear why Garcia-Roves’s property has remained in violation since she became a public official, or possibly even earlier. The last recorded visit by a code inspector was in 2015, when code enforcement responded to a complaint about a previous violation involving a truck parked in the front yard.
This story was originally published October 22, 2025 at 8:10 PM.
