Republicans have spent years trying to grow their support among Latinos in Florida, which is home to roughly half of the nation’s Venezuelan immigrants. But as President Donald Trump targets Venezuelans, Cubans and others, some Republicans fear that he’s trampling on his own successes — and potentially hurting the party’s chances in the future.
“I think some of it may threaten his gains,” Rep. Carlos Giménez told NOTUS. “The immigration policies need to be more nuanced than what they have put out.”
Giménez, a Cuban American Republican, represents part of Miami-Dade County, which is majority Hispanic and has the highest concentration of Venezuelan immigrants in the country. Much like they see the Cuban American vote, Republicans see Venezuelan Americans’ votes as particularly winnable due to the abuses by socialist and communist leaders in their native countries. Last year, about a third of Florida’s Venezuelan Americans voted for Trump — now half of them either regret or have mixed feelings about that choice, according to a poll from Florida International University.
Giménez and other Florida Republicans with large Hispanic constituencies are now trying to prevent Trump from alienating those voters after he sought to end Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole. And while they believe there’s plenty of time for him to win back dissatisfied voters through economic gains, they believe he needs to change course on some of his deportation policies.
Several Florida Republicans have been lobbying the Trump administration for a more case-by-case solution to addressing Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and others who fled authoritarian regimes and are now set to lose protections under Trump. Giménez, along with fellow Cuban American Republican Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar sent a letter in January expressing support for Venezuelans with TPS.
Salazar, whose district is in Miami-Dade County, told NOTUS that they were “explaining to the Trump administration that they do not know the nuances.”
“I am sure that at the end, the Trump administration will do the right thing, because Tren de Aragua is not TPS recipients who have been here for 18 years,” she said, referring to the gang that Trump declared an invading force in order to invoke a wartime law for fast deportation of Venezuelans.
Giménez similarly expressed confidence that Trump could turn things around with voters concerned about his immigration policies.
“He’s also taken some steps to show that he’s pretty strong against the root cause of this immigration problem, which are the regimes themselves,” Giménez said, noting that he feels his constituents are watching the bigger picture. “A lot of my constituents also know that there may be a price to pay with short-term pain in order to get a long-term gain. And that’s certainly my view.”
But experts and strategists said Republicans have reason to be concerned about Venezuelan Americans and other Latino voters.
“There is a tremendous amount of shock and bitterness and anger in a community that was trending very heavily Republican,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based consultant and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “They were basically used.”
Polls show some concerning signs for Trump among Latino voters. One recent survey from bipartisan pollsters that was backed by several large Latino organizations found that about 60% of Latinos believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. The FIU poll of Florida Venezuelans found that nearly 80% of respondents thought Trump’s move to end TPS was unjust.
That poll also traced a down-ballot reaction. Just over 40% of respondents weren’t satisfied with the response from Giménez, Salazar and Díaz-Balart, FIU found.
That’s what Florida political consultant Anthony Pedicini said he’s concerned about.
“You ignore that population at your own peril,” he told NOTUS. “I’m both watchful and concerned, because it affects all the campaigns we run.”
He said it’s too soon to know what impact the TPS and parole decisions will have on down-ballot races. He pointed to Republican voter registration in Hispanic-majority counties, where he said the numbers have continued to grow, as a reason to be optimistic, but also noted that “elections are 100% about timing.”
The TPS and parole decisions came early enough that there’s time for down-ballot candidates to craft a message on the issue or for voters to move on to more immediate concerns, he said. But if court decisions on TPS and humanitarian parole start coming down right before Election Day and headlines about deported TPS recipients begin to dominate the news, that will pose a big problem.
In the meantime, Pedicini and many others also pointed out that the economy will continue to be the primary voting issue across demographics.
“A robust economy helps people forgive a lot of sins,” Wilson said. He added that if the economy doesn’t improve, and if uncertainty continues over issues like tariffs, the electorate concerned about TPS holders and parolees will not be as forgiving.
Jaime Florez, Hispanic communications director at the Republican National Committee and former Hispanic communications director for Trump, said he is confident that the president is doing what the community voted for him to do by ending “the border crisis.” He, too, pointed to the economy as what would help Republicans win among Latinos.
“The economy is going to improve dramatically. We have faith in that,” Florez said. “People are going to be very happy with the good news in the next few months and that will change everything.”
So far, the Miami-area representatives are also confident Trump will have things back on track.
Salazar said the moves aren’t “going to hurt,” because the administration “still has four more years to go, and the economy is going to be doing so well, and we’re going to stop socialism.”
Giménez said “This is the beginning.”
“A lot of it’s going to be, what will the president do in the next year? And did it help?” he said. “Did it help the Hispanic community? Did the economy turn around?”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.