Cuban-American GOP lawmakers openly criticize Trump's immigration policies

South Florida Cuban political leaders thought to be in lockstep with President Donald Trump are now criticizing his immigration policies.

U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Miami, posting on X over the weekend, called out the president for not using legal due process when arresting undocumented migrants — and reminded Trump of his campaign pledge to focus deportations on criminal migrants.

“I remain clear in my position: anyone with a pending asylum case, status-adjustment petition, or similar claim deserves to go through the legal process,” said Salazar, who is one of several Cuban-Americans in Congress, wrote late Friday night.

“I am fully aware, and heartbroken, about the uncertainty now gripping Florida's 27th District because of the recent immigration actions of the Administration,” she wrote. “Arrests in immigration courts, including people with I-220A and pending asylum cases, the termination of the CHNV program, which has left thousands exposed to deportation.”

More than 500,000 people from CHNV countries — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — live in the U.S. under the legal tool known as humanitarian parole. Former President Biden launched the program in January 2023 to control the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border and provide “safe and orderly pathways” to the U.S.

Salazar said she agreed with the Trump administration to “kick out every criminal here illegally,” and “we should keep our focus on them.”

Cubans once enjoyed generous immigration privileges, but those have ended dramatically under Trump, whose sweeping deportation campaign has rocked the Latino community in South Florida and nationwide.

Following up Salazar’s social media post, State Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, — who founded the group Latinas for Trump — called the president's immigration policies “unacceptable and inhumane.”

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“I stand with Congresswoman Salazar,” she wrote on X. “As the state senator who represents her district and the daughter of Cuban refugees, who are now just as American, if not more so than Stephen Miller, I am deeply disappointed by these actions — and I will not stand down.”

Miller is White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of the president’s aggressive immigration and deportation policy.

“I want to put myself on record: “This is not what we voted for. I have always supported Trump, @realDonaldTrump, through thick and thin,” Garcia wrote. “However, this is unacceptable and inhumane.

“I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings — in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims — all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal.

“This undermines the sense of fairness and justice that the American people value.”

To qualify for the CHNV humanitarian parole program, migrants from those four countries were required to fly to the U.S. at their own expense and have a financial sponsor. They could not enter the U.S. through the border with Mexico. For most people, the designation lasts for two years.

The administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to end parole for immigrants from those four countries. The emergency appeal said a lower-court order had wrongly encroached on the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have used parole for decades for people unable to use regular immigration channels, whether because of time pressure or bad relations between their country and the U.S. The program is unrelated to parole in the criminal justice system.

Another immigration program the Trump administration wants to end that could affect hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians, is Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

Late last month, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to end TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants. Administration officials had ordered TPS to expire for those Venezuelans in April. An additional 250,000 Venezuelans covered by an earlier TPS designation are set to lose those protections in September. The high court had lifted a federal judge's ruling that had paused the administration's plans.

TPS allows people already living in the United States to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters.

The Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation. It covers people from more than a dozen countries, though the largest numbers come from Venezuela and Haiti.

The Trump administration is also ending the designation for roughly half a million Haitians in August. It, too, is being challenged in federal court.