Blind loyalty to President Donald Trump, a prerequisite for many in the Republican Party for the better part of the past decade, is becoming more politically complicated as support for several of his policies declines.
Latino Republicans face a particularly difficult test. They have already had to answer for their support of Trump’s economic agenda at a time when many of their constituents are struggling with the cost of living. But another issue presents a challenge of a different order: immigration.
Nowhere is that challenge more acute than in Florida, where several incumbents are trying to hold together the Latino coalition that helped move the state decisively to the right in 2024. With control of the House and even the Senate at stake this November, the question looms: Can Latino Republicans remain closely aligned with Trump while distancing themselves from immigration policies that are increasingly radioactive for some of the communities they represent? Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s reelection campaign in Miami is becoming one of the clearest tests.
Immigration raids and arrests are increasingly impacting the sizable Venezuelan and Cuban diasporas in South Florida, both of which supported Trump in 2024. Fear has taken hold of entire communities. As has happened in Mexican and Central American communities in other parts of the country, business in towns like Doral are seeing both regular customers and employees hesitant to venture outside.
Republican strategist Giancarlo Sopo, who directed Spanish-language media for Trump’s 2020 campaign, said Miami voters heard “illegal immigrant” and pictured someone who had crossed the border unlawfully while evading authorities. Yet many people now caught in immigration proceedings in Miami originally entered the United States legally.
“Immigrant communities understand these distinctions,” Sopo wrote.
But Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery increasingly does not seem to honor that difference. Federal data shows that more than half of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July had neither a criminal conviction nor pending criminal charges. By September, Reuters reported that more than three-quarters of recent ICE arrests involved people without criminal convictions or charges. Many of those arrested had pending asylum or other legal claims, including some pursuing green cards through U.S.-citizen family members.
Salazar appears to be in danger of losing the seat she comfortably won two years ago. For the better part of Trump’s second term, she has tried to juggle her own immigration agenda and her support for the administration’s appetite for harsh measures. She crafted an immigration reform proposal, the Dignity Act, and has defended “dreamers” and some temporary protected status recipients. But her efforts came paired with a reluctance to directly criticize Trump’s indiscriminate immigration policies. An internal poll commissioned by the campaign of her Democratic challenger Eliott Rodríguez found the race tied at 45 percent. Internal polls can be inaccurate, and the race is far from over. But Salazar is clearly rattled.
In a campaign ad released on Sept. 17 and recorded in front of the White House, she addressed Trump directly: “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.” The same Hispanics who helped Trump reach the White House in 2024, she said, now “feel betrayed.”
For some Venezuelan activists, her intervention comes far too late. Ade Ferro, a Democratic activist and co-founder of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said she has been pleading with Salazar to correct course for a long time. Her frustrations are representative of at least part of the Venezuelan community pressuring Salazar.
But Salazar’s pivot could also backfire with some Republican voters in her district who remain firmly loyal to Trump. “She’s out of line,” Hector Rubio, a Key Biscayne resident, told The Post last week, criticizing Salazar for confronting the president. His advice to the congresswoman was simple: stay close to Trump.
That may prove difficult. Over the weekend, a furious Trump unleashed a series of attacks on Salazar, even calling for her to be replaced on the ballot — something that is at this stage no longer possible.
Trump is clearly losing ground with Latino voters who helped return him to the White House — though it remains to be seen by what margins. Democrats are eager to win back these voters, but they should not confuse disillusionment with automatic realignment. The political opening is real, but so is the challenge.
In power, Democrats’ border policies hurt them. Trump’s gains among Latinos in 2024 were a reminder that ethnic identity does not dictate political behavior, and that many Latino voters support tougher immigration enforcement. A winning alternative to Trump’s approach needs to reconcile things too often treated as opposites: dignity and enforcement, opportunity and order, a legal path for immigrants and a commitment to the rule of law.
Latino voters demonstrated in 2024 that their support must be earned, not taken for granted. Nothing that has happened since suggests otherwise.
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