This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
KEY BISCAYNE, Florida — On the night of Florida’s primaries, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar started her victory speech with warnings about the “socialist penetration of the Democratic Party” but ended with an admonition directed at her own side.
“Some of the enforcement that we have seen this year is not the way — is not what we need to do with immigration,” Salazar said, raising her voice above the fans blowing hot, humid air onto a small crowd of supporters and journalists gathered at an Argentinian restaurant in Miami.
“I have departed from my party on this. And thank God for that.”
In a district that Trump won by 15 points, Salazar’s resistance to the administration’s immigration crackdown has for months signaled cracks in the coalition that helped Republicans take the White House and control of Congress in 2024, one that drew a striking number of Latinos to the GOP. Republicans will need those voters back to win here in Miami and in many other battlegrounds across the country this November.
Trump and his fellow Republicans found success, in part, by talking about the “chaos” immigration had wrought on the country. Now, Salazar is vying for reelection by denouncing the chaos her own party’s immigration agenda has brought to her community.
This summer, Salazar traveled to Rome holding a copy of an immigration reform bill that she introduced with Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar and asked the pope to bless it. For months, she has been seen holding tearful news conferences outside the U.S. Capitol with families of people who have been detained, sending letters to federal agencies pushing back on expedited removals and case processing delays, and making calls privately to see what can be done about this or that case.
Her criticism boiled over Thursday, when Salazar released her first TV ad of the general election, a striking 30-second spot in which she speaks directly to President Donald Trump: “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.”
The ad was released in both English and Spanish. Trump, of course, doesn’t speak Spanish, but millions of voters across Florida’s 27th Congressional District do. Many have seen the impact of the administration’s immigration crackdown in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods or in the headlines that flash across South Florida screens.
“We need to reevaluate how things are being handled. There's no need for cruelty,” said Lourdes Pestano, 62, who has lived in Miami-Dade since she immigrated from Cuba at age 14. Pestano said she is planning to support Salazar, but was glad to see her speak on immigration at her primary victory party. The conversation around immigration is losing sight of “people who have created a life here,” she said. “These are people worth respecting and who should be treated with dignity.”
Soon after Trump took office, Salazar started getting publicly involved in cases involving immigrants detained by ICE, including constituents and people held at Alligator Alcatraz, the notorious South Florida detention facility that was open from July 2025 until June of this year.
One case involved Carlos Della Vale, a Pennsylvania resident who was held at Alligator Alcatraz for part of his nine-month detention. In an interview, his wife, Angela Della Valle, said she was not allowed to visit her husband at the facility, where he was living in extremely tight quarters and with inadequate access to clean water — conditions that were confirmed by a September report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security itself.
Angela Della Valle appeared alongside Salazar and a bipartisan group of lawmakers during a news conference in Washington, D.C., in April to advocate for her husband’s release and in support of immigration reform. Carlos Della Valle has no criminal record but entered the United States without authorization twice, which closed off his path to permanent legal status. During the news conference, Salazar said that people like Carlos Della Valle shouldn’t be targeted by ICE. Afterward, Salazar stayed in touch with the family.
“She said that she would reach out on our behalf. We don't know exactly what she did, but I can tell you that when he was released, she was the first one to call,” Angela Della Valle said. After Carlos’ release, Salazar welcomed the pair back to the Capitol and shared about the reunion on social media. “Real people, real pain, real families that deserve so much better,” she wrote.
READ MORE: Maria Salazar breaks with Trump on immigration enforcement in campaign ad
Salazar was also vocal in advocating for the release of nine Cuban women who were detained during routine supervision visits with ICE in March of last year — a story that attracted significant attention in an area with a large Cuban population. One of the women’s husbands, Ernesto Puig, appeared on regional television within days of his wife’s arrest, describing how their toddler son, a U.S. citizen, would run to the door at any knock waiting to be reunited with his mother.
“When he got to daycare today, he grabbed a play phone that they have and said, ‘Mama!’... talking to himself,” Puig said.
“Todas liberadas!” — they’ve all been freed — Salazar shared on X upon the women’s release two months later, adding that she had been in close contact with ICE since she found out about the cases.
Scant polling in the race shows Salazar in a dead heat against Democrat Eliott Rodriguez, a former local TV anchor, two years after she was reelected by 20 points.
“Neither party expected this race to be particularly competitive,” said Erin Covey, a political analyst with the Cook Political Report. Salazar has lost much of her advantage, Covey said, to Trump’s tanking popularity with Latino voters.
A New York Times/Siena poll from early September found Trump’s approval among Hispanic voters at 26 percent, compared with 38 percent approval among voters overall. When asked which party they trust to handle immigration and the cost of living, three-quarters of Hispanic voters said they would trust Democrats.
“Across the board, Trump's approval rating is in a tough place, which is why we're seeing Congresswoman Salazar actively distance herself from the president in a way that really no other Republican incumbent has done this cycle at the House level,” Covey added.
In her latest ad, Salazar confronts Trump, telling him, “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.” She also urged Trump to give immigrants not “amnesty,” but a “dignified life in this promised land.”
“Lagrimas de cocodrilo” — crocodile tears — said Katharine Pichardo, the president and CEO of Latino Victory, a PAC-nonprofit pair that backs progressive Latino candidates, after watching Salazar’s TV spot.
“For Maria Elvira Salazar to now come and denounce Trump, well, good for her. Politically I guess she feels it serves her well. But the reality is that the damage is done, and she needs to go,” Pichardo said.
In a Sunday interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Salazar said that she spoke to Trump after her new ad aired and that he was receptive. During the call, Salazar said, she told Trump that GOP Latino support is a “pot of gold” that Trump brought to the GOP and that only he could preserve.
Salazar is not the only Republican taking on the impact of Trump’s immigration agenda. In Texas’ 15th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz aired an ad featuring a woman whose husband, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, was detained by ICE. The ad suggests De La Cruz helped the couple with their immigration case and blames the nation’s “broken” immigration laws for the man’s detention.
De La Cruz represents a South Texas district that Trump carried by 18 points and that, like Salazar’s, has become a battleground this cycle. De La Cruz is running against Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star with a broad name recognition in the area.
And in New York’s 17th Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler is defending his Hudson Valley seat with a TV ad in which he tells voters in Spanish that he’s backing Salazar’s immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act, to “protect families” and so that “everyone can reach the American Dream.”
That bill is key to Salazar’s pitch to voters. She blames the current situation on the country’s immigration laws, which haven’t been reformed since the Reagan administration.
The Dignity Act, crafted by Salazar and Escobar, would increase funding for border security, reform the asylum system to limit where and how people can petition for asylum, and increase criminal penalties related to illegal migration. It also would restrict immigration officers from carrying out enforcement in "sensitive locations” like schools and churches.
The bill creates a path to citizenship for childhood arrivals, but the most recent version of the proposal that was introduced in Congress did away with one of the hallmarks of the previous version, a path to citizenship for a broad swath of immigrants without permanent status. Instead, it would create a new long-term “Dignity Status.” This would allow some undocumented immigrants who meet the requirements of the law to legally work and be shielded from detention.
“They can't ever really become part of the United States,” said Heidi Altman, the vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, which opposes the bill.
Among its backers is American Families United, a group that represents mixed-status families. Ashley DeAzevedo, the group's executive director, said the bill would offer much needed reprieve to families facing fear and uncertainty over deportation, and more than anything else, she believes Salazar can push forward a politically viable proposal on an issue that has long vexed Washington.
“I can tell you, I am not a Republican, but I am still aligned with her because I believe in her character,” DeAzevedo said. “She genuinely cares and is authentic on the issue.”
In Miami, Salazar told voters in Spanish that she would “not rest” until immigration reform was enacted. “It’s much later than what I would’ve liked, but the president has two years left in office, and I’m sure that on the issue of immigration, we’re going to see something.”
“For immigrants who have been here for years, who have no criminal record, they will have some dignity. That is my promise.”
