Pro-immigrant protesters need to be smart — if most Americans are on Trump's side
By Tim Padgett
June 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM EDT
COMMENTARY A new poll shows most Americans back President Trump's immigration and deportation policies — which means protesters this weekend need to build, not burn, bridges to them.
As anti-Trump protesters look ahead to nationwide and South Florida demonstrations on Saturday, they might want to look back at anti-Clinton protests here on the streets of Miami.
In April of 2000, the feds grabbed a 6-year-old Cuban boy named Elián González from his relatives’ home in Little Havana, to return him to his father in communist Cuba.
Most Americans supported the operation. Meanwhile, Miami Cubans who opposed it didn’t exactly win over the rest of the country with violent street protests that resulted in more than 300 arrests — and featured the waving of Cuban flags.
Why was that flag flourish also a folly?
Certainly no one begrudged the protesters their pride in being Cuban or their efforts to win Cuba back from a dictatorship.
But the reason then President Bill Clinton handed Elián over to his dad was simple: international custody law required it — as did respect for the rule of law, a virtue that's supposed to define the U.S.
READ MORE: Deport everyone! Deport no one! As usual we're stuck between America's immigration extremes
Brandishing Cuban flags through the tear gas had the opposite psychological effect on Americans that Miami’s Cubans thought it should. It only further distanced Miami from the U.S. ethos, the national values, that most Americans saw in Clinton’s decision.
Symbols, like words, matter in moments like that. Waving American flags would have been smarter PR. It might have swayed folks in Peoria to consider whether rescuing Elián from Castro dovetailed with U.S. principles the way honoring treaties and conventions does.
Which is why Cubans — and Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and every other migrant and non-migrant here who's furious with President Trump’s draconian deportation drive — should play it smart themselves this weekend, as they join protests and echo the anger over deportation raids in Los Angeles.
It's more effective to show the pro-Trump immigration majority the flag of the nation migrants are aspiring to, not reminders of the ones they’re fleeing.
If they unfurl their native country’s standard, they should also display, even larger, their new country’s Stars and Stripes. Here’s why:
A new CBS-YouGov poll shows most Americans still support Trump’s xenophobic immigration and deportation policies.
I’m certainly not saying they’re right. I’m just pointing out it means, as it did for Miami Cubans in 2000, that persuasion is a better friend of protesters right now than petulance.
Activists assume that proudly flashing foreign flags — à la demonstrators raising the Mexican tricolor in L.A. — conveys that this is a legitimate struggle for immigrants’ rights.
Problem is, that’s not what registers with most people who answered that CBS poll.
Sadly, they're more apt to see only the dysfunctions of the nations driving so many migrants here in the first place.
Waymo cars
A Cuban-American protester waves a Cuban flag in Miami on April 24, 2000, after federal agents whisked Elian Gonzalez away from Little Havana to his Cuban father. (1792x1230, AR: 1.4569105691056912)
So it would seem more effective to march with an American flag. It's a vivid reminder not only that immigrants built (and build) the U.S., but that the U.S. stands for due process of law — even for undocumented migrants whom ICE agents want to haul from Home Depot parking lots to a penitentiary in El Salvador.
In other words, show the pro-Trump immigration majority the flag — the ideals — of the nation migrants are aspiring to, not reminders of the political and economic disasters they’re fleeing.
It’s about peacefully building bridges — and not playing into Trump’s martial law fantasies by burning bridges or anything else this weekend, like the Waymo cars some of the dumber protesters have torched in L.A.
That's a reminder that protesters should also avoid the more radical, self-defeating antics we saw in Miami during the Black Lives Matter racial-justice protests five years ago, like defacing statues and parading in Che Guevara T-shirts. To paraphrase John Lennon: that ain’t gonna make it with anyone you need to convince.
Yes, I know the anti-Trump protests in L.A. don't match the deadly violence and sedition that marked the pro-Trump revolt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
I’m well aware it's an authoritarian absurdity for Trump to send the National Guard and Marines to confront relatively benign demonstrators criticizing him — when he didn’t send troops against unmistakably insurrectionist rioters worshiping him.
Even so, it bears repeating: most Americans appear to be on Trump’s side on immigration.
But it also bears mentioning that even sycophantic Trumpistas like Republican state Sen. Ileana Garcia of Miami are turning against what she now calls Trump’s “inhumane” deportation campaign.
If Garcia can be won over, so can Peoria.
If the protests are smart.
As anti-Trump protesters look ahead to nationwide and South Florida demonstrations on Saturday, they might want to look back at anti-Clinton protests here on the streets of Miami.
In April of 2000, the feds grabbed a 6-year-old Cuban boy named Elián González from his relatives’ home in Little Havana, to return him to his father in communist Cuba.
Most Americans supported the operation. Meanwhile, Miami Cubans who opposed it didn’t exactly win over the rest of the country with violent street protests that resulted in more than 300 arrests — and featured the waving of Cuban flags.
Why was that flag flourish also a folly?
Certainly no one begrudged the protesters their pride in being Cuban or their efforts to win Cuba back from a dictatorship.
But the reason then President Bill Clinton handed Elián over to his dad was simple: international custody law required it — as did respect for the rule of law, a virtue that's supposed to define the U.S.
READ MORE: Deport everyone! Deport no one! As usual we're stuck between America's immigration extremes
Brandishing Cuban flags through the tear gas had the opposite psychological effect on Americans that Miami’s Cubans thought it should. It only further distanced Miami from the U.S. ethos, the national values, that most Americans saw in Clinton’s decision.
Symbols, like words, matter in moments like that. Waving American flags would have been smarter PR. It might have swayed folks in Peoria to consider whether rescuing Elián from Castro dovetailed with U.S. principles the way honoring treaties and conventions does.
Which is why Cubans — and Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and every other migrant and non-migrant here who's furious with President Trump’s draconian deportation drive — should play it smart themselves this weekend, as they join protests and echo the anger over deportation raids in Los Angeles.
It's more effective to show the pro-Trump immigration majority the flag of the nation migrants are aspiring to, not reminders of the ones they’re fleeing.
If they unfurl their native country’s standard, they should also display, even larger, their new country’s Stars and Stripes. Here’s why:
A new CBS-YouGov poll shows most Americans still support Trump’s xenophobic immigration and deportation policies.
I’m certainly not saying they’re right. I’m just pointing out it means, as it did for Miami Cubans in 2000, that persuasion is a better friend of protesters right now than petulance.
Activists assume that proudly flashing foreign flags — à la demonstrators raising the Mexican tricolor in L.A. — conveys that this is a legitimate struggle for immigrants’ rights.
Problem is, that’s not what registers with most people who answered that CBS poll.
Sadly, they're more apt to see only the dysfunctions of the nations driving so many migrants here in the first place.
Waymo cars
A Cuban-American protester waves a Cuban flag in Miami on April 24, 2000, after federal agents whisked Elian Gonzalez away from Little Havana to his Cuban father. (1792x1230, AR: 1.4569105691056912)
So it would seem more effective to march with an American flag. It's a vivid reminder not only that immigrants built (and build) the U.S., but that the U.S. stands for due process of law — even for undocumented migrants whom ICE agents want to haul from Home Depot parking lots to a penitentiary in El Salvador.
In other words, show the pro-Trump immigration majority the flag — the ideals — of the nation migrants are aspiring to, not reminders of the political and economic disasters they’re fleeing.
It’s about peacefully building bridges — and not playing into Trump’s martial law fantasies by burning bridges or anything else this weekend, like the Waymo cars some of the dumber protesters have torched in L.A.
That's a reminder that protesters should also avoid the more radical, self-defeating antics we saw in Miami during the Black Lives Matter racial-justice protests five years ago, like defacing statues and parading in Che Guevara T-shirts. To paraphrase John Lennon: that ain’t gonna make it with anyone you need to convince.
Yes, I know the anti-Trump protests in L.A. don't match the deadly violence and sedition that marked the pro-Trump revolt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
I’m well aware it's an authoritarian absurdity for Trump to send the National Guard and Marines to confront relatively benign demonstrators criticizing him — when he didn’t send troops against unmistakably insurrectionist rioters worshiping him.
Even so, it bears repeating: most Americans appear to be on Trump’s side on immigration.
But it also bears mentioning that even sycophantic Trumpistas like Republican state Sen. Ileana Garcia of Miami are turning against what she now calls Trump’s “inhumane” deportation campaign.
If Garcia can be won over, so can Peoria.
If the protests are smart.