Amid mounting outrage across the nation over the weekend fatal shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, an ongoing civic campaign in Miami is continuing its clarion call blasting the Trump administration's "cruel immigration policies and dangerous abuses of power targeting immigrant communities."
The local campaign, led by "Keep Them Honest," said Tuesday they are going to roll out Spanish-language and English-language ads on broadcast and cable television, digital platforms, social media, and billboards throughout South Florida to call attention to the administration's aggressive immigration strategy and its threat against "fundamental constitutional rights."
The ad campaign, which begin Tuesday, is demanding that Congress reign in the administration.
READ MORE: South Florida media, community leaders call out Trump's 'authoritarian' immigration policies
Two prominent journalists and civic leaders — former WFOR CBS4 television news anchor and reporter Eliott Rodriguez and former Miami Herald publisher and former CEO of the Knight Foundation Alberto Ibargüen — are joining the Keep Them Honest campaign.
"Their decision to step forward comes at a moment of national reckoning, as the Minnesota killings have raised urgent questions about accountability, due process, and the expanding use of force in immigration enforcement," said the Keep Them Honest campaign in a statement announcing Rodriguez and Ibargüen.
Other prominent local civic leaders include former Miami Dade College President Eduardo Padrón, former Spanish-language TV journalist Leticia Callava, children’s rights activists and former Miami Herald Publisher David Lawrence Jr, and former WPLG Local 10 reporter Michael Putney.
Those civic leaders joining the campaign are "united by a single principle: silence in the face of injustice is not an option."
“For forty-eight years, I reported the truth,” Rodriguez, son of Cuban immigrants, says in one ad. “Now here’s my truth: this community was built by hardworking immigrants."
"Secure borders matter — but so does due process and our Constitution," he said. " When leaders stay silent as those rights are trampled, that silence is not leadership.”
In the other ad, Ibargüen supports secure border and a "rational immigration policy."
"But cruelty enforced by masked men — and now deadly force used without accountability — is not who we are," Ibargüen says in the ad. "We must defend our values and demand better from our representatives.”
Keep Them Honest is a 501(c)(4) organization that is not required to disclose its donors, but the The New York Times reported last August that the group was backed by Michael B. Fernández, a billionaire philanthropist and chair of MBF Healthcare Partners, a private investment firm based in Coral Gables.
Fernández, who is Cuban-American, told The Times that he hoped to “wake up the conscience” of Miamians, especially fellow Cuban Americans.
“We are seeing a replay of what I saw when I was 12 years old and left Cuba,” Fernández said. “It is beyond troubling. It is scary.”
