Salazar Latino Voters: GOP Star Warns Trump on Immigration
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, did something rare last month: she ran a television ad aimed directly at President Donald Trump, warning him that his immigration crackdown has “gone too far” and is costing Republicans the support of salazar latino voters who carried him to victory in 2024.
The Ad That Broke With Trump
Filmed in front of the White House, Salazar’s ad told the president bluntly that “the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.” The congresswoman, now in her third term representing Florida’s 27th Congressional District, said friends and relatives of her constituents had been swept up in the administration’s deportation push.
Trump did not take the message quietly. On his Truth Social account, he shared a post from another user calling Salazar a “back stabber.” Salazar later said she had spoken with the president afterward and did not view his comments as attacks. “This is democracy where we tell the boss, ‘Hey, this is what’s happening in my neck of the woods,'” she said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”
A District on Edge
The tension is playing out in real time in her district, which is more than 70% Latino. In Little Havana’s Máximo Gómez Park — better known as Domino Park, where Cuban Americans gather to play dominoes — recent gatherings have turned into heated political debates over whether Trump’s policies or former President Joe Biden’s were to blame for the rising cost of living.
Salazar has long pushed for a middle path on immigration. For several years she has championed a proposal she calls the Dignity Act, designed to block deportations of immigrants considered pillars of their communities — hospitality, construction, and farm workers among them.
But some of the district’s voters say her stand comes too late. One Democratic voter at a campaign event said he would vote a straight blue ticket, arguing Salazar had supported Trump and funding for ICE throughout and was only “defending Hispanics” at the last hour.
What the Polls Say
Salazar’s warning is backed by shifting numbers. Pew Research Center data shows Trump cut Democrats’ margin with Latino voters nationally to just three points in 2024, down from 25 points four years earlier. Now, a recent survey by the polling firm Equis Research found that among registered voters who identify as Hispanic or Latino, Democrats would win a congressional election held today by 57 to 31.
Eduardo Gamarra, a politics professor at Florida International University, says the local economy’s malaise — rising prices and cost-of-living worries — has eclipsed immigration as the dominant concern. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” Salazar’s ad warned — and with three weeks until the midterms, her party is listening anxiously.
Source: NPR