Saturday's nationwide demonstrations against President Donald Trump were largely about his alleged threats to democracy — but in communities like Miami, even Trump supporters decried his anti-immigrant crusade.
Like the rest of the 2,000 or so "No Kings" protests against Trump’s policies, the downtown Miami demonstration was a loud but largely peaceful event. But because Miami is an immigrant community at its core, the focus of the protest here was Trump’s aggressive campaign to arrest and deport undocumented migrants.
Earlier protests that erupted against deportation raids in Los Angeles were much on the minds of demonstrators at Miami’s Torch of Friendship — including Mexican-American engineer Eugenio Palomo, who told WLRN somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
“Thanks to Trump, I became a U.S. citizen.”
Palomo, 50, who lives in Westchester, came to the U.S. from Mexico 27 years ago. But he didn’t become a citizen until he watched Trump launch his first presidential campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists and drug-traffickers.”
Palomo has voted against Trump ever since — but more importantly, he says, he’s become more conscious about helping Mexican and other migrants.
“In Homestead, I support those migrant families whose kids are trying to go to school instead of spending time in the fields with their parents" harvesting fruits and vegetables," Palomo said.
"Every month I contribute something to these kids. When President Trump in his first term separated [undocumented migrant] families, and many of these kids ended up in detention in Homestead, I took blankets and pillows for them.”
Many Los Angeles protesters were widely criticized last week for waving Mexican flags during anti-deportation demonstrations. Palomo instead brought two large flags to the Miami protest: one Mexican and one American, he said, to remind Trump supporters of the outsize role migrants like Mexicans have played in building the U.S. and its economy — and that they're not the "invading" foreign criminals Trump's MAGA movement claims.
“This fear-mongering has to stop," Palomo said.
"We are not bad people, we are not murderers. I always admired Americans when I was living in Mexico — and I never imagined I would be doing what I’m doing today.”
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Neither did real estate investor and venture capitalist René Amaya, a second-generation Salvadoran-American in North Miami Beach.
Amaya carried two upside-down American flags — not as a show of disrespect, but rather the traditional sign of distress.
Amaya supports Trump’s presidency. But in honor of his father, who escaped El Salvador’s bloody civil war in the 1980s and came to America as an undocumented refugee — then received legal status under then President Ronald Reagan's 1986 migrant amnesty — he said he can’t support Trump’s immigration agenda.
“I voted for Trump, and I don’t regret it," Amaya insisted.
"But it’s not about politics, man; I believe it’s about what’s right for human beings — and I’m glad my dad fought to be here, because if not, we’d be suffering in El Salvador our whole life. I really believe immigrants do make up America — and we are all immigrants.”
Amaya, who was joined by his wife and young daughter, said he came to protest in large part because he feels Trump went back on his word to focus deportation raids on criminals.
Instead, Amaya argued, too many law-abiding, gainfully employed undocumented migrants, many of whom have built families and roots in U.S. communities, are being caught in the dragnet, often as they leave hearings where they are applying to legalize their immigration status.
The Trump administration insists anyone in the country illegally is by default a deportable criminal. But hundreds of thousands of other migrants — who are in fact here legally on programs such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or humanitarian parole — are suddenly watching Trump strip them of those immigration benefits, making them undocumented, and deportable, overnight.
“The point was to capture those migrants that are bad for the community, bad for my daughter," Amaya said. "Not individuals that are innocent, hard-working.
"But it turns out Hispanics — we are being targeted.”
"I voted for Trump, and I don’t regret it — but this isn't about politics, man, it's about what’s right for human beings, and Hispanics are being targeted now."René Amaya
Other Trump loyalists in Miami — including Republican state Sen. Ileana Garcia, who founded Latinas for Trump, and GOP U.S. Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez — are also turning against the President's immigration policies.
Garcia earlier this month even called Trump's deportation strategy "inhumane."
The feeling of being in the crosshairs is why Elodia Castillo, herself a second-generation Guatemalan-American who works in a Miami hospital, did not bring her Guatemalan-born mother, who does not have U.S. citizenship, to Saturday's Miami protest.
“I just want to be clear, my mom was afraid to come here — just for the simple fact of the [deportation] raids" happening around the U.S., Castillo said
Agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, are working to meet Trump's heightened arrest quotas — often, critics charge, with little regard for legal due process.
"It was very emotional this morning," Castillo said. "My mom gave me a very big hug and she said, ‘Speak for me.’ So that, right there, is fire in my heart that says I have no choice but to stand up as a second generation daughter of migrants here in the United States.”
Castillo said that point was also driven home recently when ICE agents, detained her uncle in Fort Lauderdale — until they discovered he’s a U.S. citizen.
“From my understanding," Castillo said, "'liberty and justice for all' is for all. I pledged it when I was a little girl in elementary school; I pledged when I was in middle school, I pledged when I was in high school.
"So tell me what is different now?”
ICERAID app
Meanwhile, as if to remind protesters like Castillo why they were at Saturday’s demonstration, so was Miami native Enrique Tarrio.
Tarrio is a leader of the right-wing, white supremacist hate group Proud Boys. He was convicted for his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and was serving 22 years in prison — but was pardoned by President Trump earlier this year.
Tarrio and other pardoned Proud Boys recently filed a $100 million lawsuit against the U.S. government for what they call the violation of their constitutional rights during their Jan. 6 prosecutions.
Amid boos and taunts from protesters, Tarrio was provocatively promoting the new app he debuted late last week, called ICERAID — which pays people in cryptocurrency to report crimes committed by undocumented migrants.
Asked by WLRN about those who call ICERAID a xenophobic vigilante stunt, Tarrio said, “I’m going to be very blunt: I think those people are idiots. What we were seeing in Los Angeles [last week] with these [anti-Trump] rioters is wrong.
"If we'd gotten the ICERAID app out sooner, somebody with an iPhone could have made a crap-ton of money in Los Angeles by taking pictures of illegal immigrants [who were] committing crimes.”
There were few if any arrests made during the Miami "No Kings" protest — which suggests ICERAID probably didn’t pay out a “crap-ton” of money in Tarrio’s hometown, either.
Other protesters said it was a sign of the success of the growing national backlash against Trump's deportation drive last week, when Trump pulled back on arrests of undocumented migrant workers in key industries like agriculture, hotels and restaurants.
