Two Miami Republicans call out Trump’s inhumanity on immigration. Will others follow? | Opinion
The strongest and most important rebuke to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda will never come from Democrats, activists or even the media. It will come from members of his own party who are seeing the damage that his mass deportation agenda and the revocation of legal status from hundreds of thousands of people are doing to communities like Miami-Dade County.
Two Miami Republicans have taken an important and notable stance by directly criticizing actions by the Trump administration, with the strongest words coming from Latinas for Trump co-founder, state Sen. Ileana Garcia. In a Saturday post on X, Garcia wrote she’s the daughter of “Cuban refugees, who are now just as American, if not more so than Stephen Miller,” the White House aide who’s considered to be the main architect of Trump’s immigration agenda.
“I want to put myself on record: ‘This is not what we voted for. I have always supported Trump, @realDonaldTrump, through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane. I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings.’”
Garcia’s words are important at a time when most of her fellow Republicans have blindly fallen in line with Trump — even if her comments sound naive at best. Saying that “this is not what we voted for” ignores much of what Trump said in his reelection campaign. When he promised the “largest deportation effort in American history” — and his then-running mate JD Vance said the U.S. should start by deporting one million people — it was clear they wouldn’t achieve that goal only by targeting people who have a criminal record. What else should the American people have expected from a president who accused undocumented migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country?”
Nevertheless, Garcia’s stance matters. Her post was a response to a statement U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar also posted on social media the day before. Salazar wrote she’s “heartbroken” by the “uncertainty” that recent actions by the administration have caused in her heavily Hispanic district, and that the revocation of a humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans and other measures “jeopardize our duty to due process.”
Salazar and fellow Miami GOP U.S. Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz Balart — all Trump supporters — have in recent months raised concern about the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, even asking to meet with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. But Salazar’s latest statement coupled with Garcia’s are a stronger rebuke of the chaos that has unfolded in immigrant communities and the political implications that may represent for Republicans.
We need more Republicans — and leaders of all party affiliations — to speak up in this county built with help from refugees and immigrants. Revoking TPS and the parole program would have an unprecedented impact on local economies, and sending people back to countries and regimes the U.S. and Miami Republicans have condemned for human rights abuses is at the very least hypocritical.
Most deafening has been the silence and complicity from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has walked away from his once-staunch support of TPS for Venezuelans since joining the Trump administration. Rubio has also been leading efforts to strip international students of their visas.
It appears that Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Miami who in 2013 belonged to a bipartisan coalition that tried to pass immigration reform, has traded the principles he once held for a job in the Trump administration. Other local Republicans hoping to curry favor with the president, or simply trying to avoid retaliation from him, might save their strongest criticism of Trump’s policies to private conversations. Their lack of courage does their community a disservice. If the founder of Latinas for Trump can speak up, so can others.
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This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 5:24 PM.