The President and His Immigration Bulldozer

Maribel Hastings

Posted May 29, 2025

The Supreme Court decision that allows President Donald Trump to revoke TPS from some 350,000 Venezuelans, taking their work permits and leaving them vulnerable to deportation, represents a blow to a community that, in states like Florida, overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 elections.

The decision upends lives and implies the return of thousands of Venezuelans to an oppressive regime with grave economic and social problems. Many even fear for their lives.

On a political level, the question is whether Trump’s actions will adversely affect Republican legislators in Florida in the midterm elections or have some effect on Republicans in the 2028 general elections. Cuban American congresspeople in Florida resist directly criticizing Trump and continue blaming former president Joe Biden, although Trump is revoking the protections and has been in power for four months.

Your silence is neither neutral nor ignorance; it is complicity and cowardice… Your silence has caused fear and real harm to many in our community and your districts.”
Mike Fernández

Recently, the state’s Democratic Hispanic Caucus paid for a billboard calling Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the three Cuban American congresspeople from Florida, María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, and Mario Díaz-Balart, “traitors” for not standing up to Trump.

And in an open letter to Rubio and the three congresspeople, multimillionaire Cuban American businessman Mike Fernández wrote, “the silence from our own leaders-the sons and daughters of exiles—has become deafening. Your silence is neither neutral nor ignorance; it is complicity and cowardice… Your silence has caused fear and real harm to many in our community and your districts.”

Although it’s premature to reach conclusions, at least one recent poll from Equis Research and Data for Progress concludes that Latino support for Trump, especially those who voted for him in 2024, has been eroding. His handling of immigration is one of the reasons for the decline.

According to the survey, 66% of Latino voters think Trump’s actions “are going too far and targeting the types of immigrants who strengthen our nation.” In fact, 34% of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 believe that the president has gone overboard in his immigration policy.

That is, like the rest of the country, Latinos support a balanced migration policy with border security, where criminals are deported — and not immigrants who have been with us for decades, respect the law, and pay taxes. They also support a fair asylum system and programs like TPS and humanitarian parole that, until now, have protected not only Venezuelans but also Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians.

The Equis survey concludes that “Trump has not hit rock-bottom on immigration, nor has slippage in his approval ratings transferred altogether into support for Democrats.”

But if something remains clear, it’s that Trump’s immigration policy is openly prejudiced against Latin American, Haitian, Muslim, and African immigrants, among others. And in the case of Latin Americans, it doesn’t even matter if they come from groups that have supported him at the polls, as in the case of Venezuelans and Cuban Americans in the South of Florida.

At any rate, he wants to intensify his anti-immigrant crusade. The reconciliation bill before Congress contemplates billions of dollars for the interior enforcement of immigration laws, increasing detention centers, as well as machinery for transportation and deportation.

According to the American Immigration Council, “Should these funds be appropriated by Congress, over the next few years ICE could ramp up mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the entire federal government.”

Because Trump’s scorched-earth policy — not only on immigration, but on other fronts — has all the grace of a bulldozer running over everything in its path, with no concern for whether it affects the economy, separates families, and destroys lives.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.