The political friction centers on a campaign video released on Thursday by Miami Representative María Elvira Salazar. In the ad, Salazar argued that the president’s immigration enforcement efforts had crossed a line.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar Warns of Voter Backlash
Salazar stated that Donald Trump had betrayed
Hispanic voters who were instrumental in his 2024 election victory. Pointing to data from July, she noted that 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. She also warned the president directly in her ad, saying, Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policies.
“You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery, and Reagan was for communism. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”
President Trump pushed back sharply against the criticism on Friday, calling Rep. María Elvira Salazar weak on border security. Salazar incurred Trump’s wrath by releasing the campaign video.
Business Impacts and Local Frustrations in Doral
A Republican mayor in Florida has made a desperate attempt to distance herself from Donald Trump and the president’s hardline immigration policies. Christi Fraga was forced to do damage control after business owners in the city of Doral complained to CBS News Miami that masked ICE goons roaming the streets are severely hurting their sales.
In Doral, where Trump has a hotel and golf resort located around 80 miles from his Mar-a-Lago home, business owners report that immigration enforcement actions are devastating their customer base. The owner of a burger restaurant in the South Florida city said customers are becoming too scared to come out because ICE agents carrying out the president’s immigration policies are detaining people.
Christi Fraga was the first woman to be elected mayor of Doral in 2022. Fraga, who is not up for re-election until 2028, has attempted to distance her administration from the federal strategy. While acknowledging that immigration enforcement falls under federal jurisdiction, Mayor Fraga expressed clear frustration with how local operations are executed without prior notification to city officials, noting that the city is not notified when ICE agents plan an immigration raid in Doral while defending her office’s response to the complaints it has received.
“I don’t agree with the way things are handled. This is federal law. We cannot impede the federal ICE agents from coming into the cities and doing their enforcement, whether we agree or not.”
Fraga also stated, It’s not just emails and letters. There are phone calls being made. We are doing what we can to have conversations. I know it’s a very difficult time. I recognize it.
She said she sympathizes with those affected by the president’s policies while trying.
GOP Electoral Stakes in Miami-Dade County
Fraga is not the only Republican to distance themselves from Trump and his deeply unpopular policies during his second term. With the crucial midterm elections approaching, more lawmakers believe their election chances will improve if they aren’t tied to a president recording near-all-time-low approval ratings. Voter backlash against Donald Trump could doom the GOP to an electoral wipeout in the midterms.
Even those close to the president are expressing concerns about how damaging ICE’s hardline actions in Miami-Dade, an area of Florida with a high Latino and Hispanic population, could be for the GOP in November. The county was a Democratic stronghold for decades but voted for Trump in 2024, largely because the president increased his vote share among the key Hispanic bloc.
A Trump adviser told Axios, I’m getting the Trumpiest Cubans sending me videos from Miami of guys getting busted at places like the gas station, for no apparent reason.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
