Florida Republican María Elvira Salazar has launched a rare public attack on Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, warning that Hispanic voters who helped return him to the White House in 2024 now feel betrayed.
In a 30-second television advert, which is also airing in Spanish, Ms Salazar addresses the president directly. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she says, later adding: “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
The intervention is striking because Ms Salazar is a three-term representative, an assistant whip in the House Republican leadership and a politician whose Miami district is not regarded as a likely battleground. She won re-election by 20 percentage points in 2024, while Mr Trump took 57 per cent of the vote in Florida’s 27th Congressional District.
Her message nevertheless reflects growing concern among some Republicans that the administration’s immigration policies could damage the party among Hispanic voters, including in South Florida, which has moved to the right in recent elections.
Ms Salazar is being challenged by Democrat Eliott Rodríguez in a contest between two Cuban American former broadcast journalists. Fernand R Amandi, Mr Rodríguez’s campaign strategist, accused her of “lying” in the advert.
“She did this,” Mr Amandi said in a statement. “She owns all of these deportations, ICE harassment and racial profiling. She voted for all this. She gave Trump the billions in ICE funding and the tools to do this.”
He added: “Don’t let her phony, eleventh-hour, ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ tears fool you because her boss’s immigration policy is now political poison in her re-election campaign.”
Mr Trump endorsed Ms Salazar earlier this year, writing on Truth Social: “SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN.” Her campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Salazar presses Republicans over immigration policy
Ms Salazar has spent months urging fellow House Republicans to support bipartisan legislation that would offer some immigrants without criminal records a route to legal status and work permits, but not citizenship.
The proposal has attracted the support of more than a dozen Republicans, many representing battleground districts where Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown has proved unpopular. It has also placed Ms Salazar at odds with immigration hard-liners aligned with the party’s MAGA wing, who have condemned the measure as mass amnesty.
The dispute became public during a congressional recess earlier this year after Texas Republican Brandon Gill criticised the legislation on social media. The exchange developed into a series of posts involving other far-right Republicans.
South Florida has been affected by federal and state enforcement measures, including the state-run detention facility in the Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz. The centre closed this summer after being described as costly and ineffective, while a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report said it had failed to meet a range of federal detention standards, including by holding migrants in “small metal enclosures”.
The end of Temporary Protected Status for people from countries including Haiti and Venezuela has also unsettled parts of the region. Thousands of immigrants have been detained or withdrawn from public life, fearful of going to work or sending their children to school.
Some South Florida Republicans, including officials in Doral, have opposed the severity of the enforcement measures. Republican sheriffs in Florida have also raised concerns about deporting immigrants who have not committed crimes.
