Where is Miami’s outrage? We were once those immigrants | Opinion

I’ve seen the protests in Los Angeles. I’ve seen the fury on the streets of cities nationwide as immigrants are ripped away in horror from their families and communities — in restaurants, at Home Depot. They are working people, neighbors, parents and friends.

I look around Miami and wonder: Where’s the outrage?

Where are the voices that usually fill the streets of Little Havana with indignation and shock? Where are the Cubans who gather at Versailles Restaurant to speak with one voice?

Today, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Mexicans — and yes, “newer” Cubans — are facing deportations or the loss of temporary protected status. Many are being torn from the lives they’ve built.

In March, President Donald Trump revoked temporary humanitarian parole for about 300,000 Cubans, many of whom have been detained ahead of possible deportation.

And yet in Miami, the outcry seems to be limited. I hear a ridiculous and troubling refrain:”We came here legally. We did it the right way.”

It’s time to break this down and confront the truth behind that narrative.

Yes, we came legally — but not because we were more deserving or a cut above. We came legally because we were lucky. It was, in fact, dumb luck, a fluke, and we were politically useful.

My family and I left Cuba and came to Miami in January 1961. A few months later, during the Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S. abandoned a CIA paramilitary force of Cuban exiles aiming to overthrow Fidel Castro on the beaches of Playa Girón.

My stepfather was one of 1,400 men who participated in the invasion and spent nearly two years in a Cuban prison. In the wake of that disaster, President John F. Kennedy and his administration needed to save face and reassert moral authority. The result? A unique set of laws and policies, including the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, that gave Cubans extraordinary access to legal residency, federal assistance and a future in this country.

I still remember the powdered milk, the delicious peanut butter and my grandmother cooking the carne del refugio — or “refugee meat,” as we called the Spam-like fare given to my family on a regular basis by the government. We benefited from these policies, and so did, eventually, one million Cubans.

But it was not about merit. It was about geopolitics.

It was a blessing we received from history’s accident, not moral superiority. And yet so many in our community turn a blind eye to the struggles of other immigrants — and even of other Cubans — struggles that mirror our own.

Today’s Mexican day laborer, Haitian asylum seeker, Venezuelan or Cuban immigrant is no less worthy of dignity and compassion than our Cuban parents and grandparents were in the 1960s.

Our silence is a betrayal of our own story.

Miami was built by people like my parents who fled oppression, persecution and poverty. We know what it means to be uprooted. We know the pain of family separation and exile.

So why do we tolerate policies that inflict the same pain on others? Why do we stay silent when a new generation of immigrants faces barriers we never had to overcome?

By doing so, we dishonor every sacrifice we made to build this city.

Miami should be the first city standing up for immigrant rights. And Cuban Americans, of all people, should be leading that charge.

Marianne Murciano is a journalist and TV and radio host from Miami and Chicago. She is the founder of Savvy Planet and a Cuban American. She arrived from Havana with her family in Miami on Jan. 14, 1961.