Latest news with #Venezuelans
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Miami's Hispanic Republicans push back on Trump's mass-deportation agenda
In letters, public statements and social media posts, Republican lawmakers from Miami are pushing back on President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts. And even some of his most loyal Cuban-American backers are joining the chorus. At a bilingual press conference outside of the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez said he does not agree with Trump's one-size-fits-all approach to immigration He said cases should be handled on a case by case basis because every immigrant's situation is different. 'We are working hard to express our opinion and let the President and the administration know that there is a better way, a more just way, for the people here in Miami-Dade County. Because they are our neighbors, and productive members of society,' he told reporters. His remarks come as several Cuban-American officials from Miami, at both the state and federal level, have expressed disapproval and fear regarding the Trump administration's immigration enforcement and policies that heavily target Cubans, Venezuelans, and Haitians — all communities with significant populations in South Florida. READ MORE: 'Inhumane:' Latinas for Trump founder condemns White House immigration crackdown Republican state Sen. Ileana Garcia, one of Trump's staunchest backers in Tallahassee, blasted Trump's mass deportation policies as 'unacceptable' and 'inhumane.' 'This is not what we voted for,' she wrote in a statement. U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, also a Republican, has said she is 'heartbroken' amid the uncertainty in her district and warned that recent actions threaten due process. And GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart recently sent a letter to Homeland Security noting he was 'increasingly concerned' with the 'growing cases' of the detentions and possible deportations of people fleeing oppressive regimes. READ MORE: Miami congressman urges Noem not to deport Venezuelan torture victim Gimenez confirmed on Tuesday that he had met recently with Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. 'We told her why we are having issues with what they are doing with Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians living in Miami-Dade County. That's why you've seen some degree of difference in President Trump's tone,' said Gimenez. Many of the Latino communities in South Florida that helped flip Miami-Dade red, like Cubans and Venezuelans, have been hardest hit by Trump's immigration policies. Under the Trump administration, a countrywide operation to arrest people leaving immigration court has shocked some of Miami's conservative officials. The White House has also moved to end deportation protections and work permits for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans under Temporary Protected Status, rolled back an 18-month extension for Haiti's TPS, and enacted stringent travel restrictions towards Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. It has also stripped protections from over half-a-million Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Haitians who legally came to the U.S. through the Biden-era parole program. 'Let's deport criminals, gang members, and people with deportation orders. This is a country of law. But there are also many people who entered because they were almost invited by President Biden... I won't say they have a right — but they have good arguments to stay here in the United States. Because if not they have to return to countries that will oppress them like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti,' said Gimenez. Amid the City of Miami formalizing a partnership with ICE that will allow its cops to wield limited immigration enforcement powers, Gimenez said that he thought police departments should support ICE when the federal agency needs back up but that it's not their role to enforce immigration laws. Both the Florida and federal governments have pushed for these partnerships. 'I don't think that's their job. That's ICE's job,' said Gimenez.
Atlantic
12 hours ago
- Business
- Atlantic
Venezuela Is Open for Investment*
The end of Nicolás Maduro's vicious dictatorship, many people can agree, would be a good thing. Millions of Venezuelans certainly want it; various members of the Trump administration have said they want it, too. The European Parliament passed a resolution urging world leaders to support Venezuela's opposition to Maduro as a ' moral duty.' And yet, leaders of that opposition have felt the need to come up with a more persuasive message: Helping Venezuela's democratic cause is not just about doing the right thing, they imply. It's also a chance to make bank. Last Thursday, members of the press were invited to a Gilded Age mansion in Manhattan for a presentation titled 'A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: The Global Upside of a Democratic Venezuela.' At the center of the event was María Corina Machado, the woman who campaigned for president of Venezuela last year and would very likely have won, had Maduro's regime not banned her from running and then declared victory over her substitute in what a Washington, D.C.–based think tank called 'the mother of all electoral frauds.' (The Organization of American States agrees that ' electoral fraud ' took place.) On a videochat from her hiding place in Caracas, Machado told the audience, in English, 'Today, Venezuela stands on the brink of a historic transformation.' She was referring to a democratic transition, which she expressed confidence would soon happen—and to 'the immense wealth-generation potential' that this transition would unleash. 'This opportunity extends beyond our borders,' she said. International investors would 'benefit from unparalleled conditions starting on day one.' What followed was not so much a press conference as a pitch to Wall Street. Sary Levy-Carciente, an economist on Machado's team, took the microphone. Should the opposition come to power, 'we are talking about 10 percent per year growth,' Levy-Carciente said, as aides handed out flyers listing sectors that would blossom under a hypothetical Machado-led government. These included tourism, where Venezuela is a 'sleeping giant'; real estate, where 'huge, huge profits' await; and, of course, fossil fuels, given that 'Venezuela boasts the world's largest oil reserves and the eighth-largest natural-gas reserves.' In 15 years, the money to be made from a democratic Venezuela—based on 'conservative assumptions,' investors could rest assured—amounted to $1.7 trillion. Machado's team did not explicitly address the precondition for unlocking this bonanza: the end of a 26-year dictatorship whose leader doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. In the past year, Maduro has ramped up repression, disappeared prominent activists, and imprisoned even low-profile protesters. An atmosphere of fear has swept Venezuela. The presentation called for investment in a democratic Venezuela that doesn't yet exist, without providing any guidance as to how exactly it was going to come into being. If Machado's team had anyone in mind to facilitate this transition—say, someone in the Trump administration—no one said so. Still, given that American financiers can do very little on their own to usher in the end of dictatorships in South America, Trump officials, if not Donald Trump himself, seemed to be the ultimate audience for the Machado team's new message—suggesting a new perception, among Venezuelan opposition leaders, of what will move the Trump administration to help their cause. During the first Trump administration, the notion that Washington might deliver Venezuela from Maduro didn't seem all that far-fetched (and didn't seem to require a profit motive). Trump often condemned Venezuela's dictatorship. In front of an excited crowd of Venezuelans in Miami in 2019, the president proclaimed that Maduro's days were numbered. He recognized Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader, as the interim president of Venezuela until the country could have free and fair elections. Dozens of nations around the world followed suit. The excitement fizzled out when it became clear that Maduro had no intention of relinquishing power, and Trump wasn't willing or able to make him. Since that time, the Venezuelan opposition has gotten stronger. Machado is much more popular than Guaidó, who emerged seemingly out of nowhere. Guaidó won Washington's backing because he happened to fill a certain role—he was the majority leader of the legislature—at a moment when that put him in line for the presidency. But Machado has a face that every Venezuelan recognizes because she has dedicated more than 20 years to fighting the country's dictatorship. She can rally crowds in the most remote parts of Venezuela. Even so, the second Trump administration appears to be more interested in deporting Venezuelans from America than in supporting a politician who could make Venezuela more livable. Gone are the days when Trump vowed to apply 'maximum pressure' on Maduro. I had a chance to ask Machado, just a couple weeks after Inauguration Day this year, what she expected from the new Trump administration. She said that she thought Trump would understand helping the Venezuelan opposition as a matter of 'national security and hemispheric security,' given the regional threats posed by the Venezuelan government. Maduro, after all, was the reason for the migrant outflows; he has also tolerated the rise of Tren de Aragua, the criminal gang Trump so frequently references. She didn't mention anything about economic interests. Machado had worked out a theory for how regime change could come about in Venezuela. If other countries exerted sufficient pressure on Maduro's government, she suggested, the 'cost of preserving the status quo' would go up. Top officials would eventually figure that their interests were better served by negotiating an exit deal with the opposition. That's why she supported American sanctions on Venezuela, regardless of what American think tanks and academics had to say about the pain they inflicted on Venezuelans. 'Sanctions to those who violate human rights harm the Venezuelan people?' Machado scoffed. 'What really harms the people is a criminal government that intentionally brought down our productive apparatus.' Machado does have one ally in the Trump administration: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently praised her as 'the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.' In November 2022, President Joe Biden issued a license to allow the oil company Chevron to evade sanctions in order to extract oil in Venezuela. Rubio has called this a ' pro-Maduro ' gift and pushed to let it expire. Unfortunately, for Machado at least, Rubio is not the only person in Washington trying to set policy on Venezuela. Trump's presidential envoy, Richard Grenell, appears to think that America stands to benefit from having a transactional relationship with Maduro. Shortly after the inauguration, Grenell traveled to Caracas to urge Maduro to accept deportation flights, and Maduro agreed to free six Americans detained in Venezuela. Grenell and Maduro shook hands and smiled for the camera—not exactly the ' maximum pressure ' Trump once promised to put on Maduro. Late last month, as the Chevron license's expiration date approached, Rubio and Grenell duked it out online. Grenell met with Maduro officials in the Caribbean, then went on a podcast to announce that the license would be extended–only for Rubio to contradict him the next day on X, where the secretary of state announced that the license would expire as scheduled. Eventually, the Trump administration settled on a compromise, extending the license but making it more restrictive. Observers have since talked about Rubio and Grenell as leaders of two competing factions within the Trump administration: the principled Venezuela hawks versus the pragmatists willing to make deals with Maduro. Now Machado appears to be trying to reconcile both sides. And she has a message for the pragmatists: Working with us will bring more financial benefits than dealing with Maduro. The stance has required an awkward bit of pragmatism from Machado herself. Her team has publicly urged the Trump administration not to revoke the protected status the Biden administration extended to Venezuelan immigrants. But Machado has also spoken in favor of deporting Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, without questioning the Trump administration's allegations that the Venezuelans it deported were, in fact, gang members. When I asked a question about this at the press conference, a moderator demurred, saying that such 'political questions' would be answered at the end and asking if there were any more questions regarding the economic plan proposed. In a profile for The Spectator last July, the writer Paola Romero described Machado as mixing 'the crowd-pulling allure of Evita Peron with the politics of Margaret Thatcher.' Those are indeed the two Machados: one who tours her country to bring consoling messages of hope to Venezuela's poorest, and another who wears a pantsuit and jewels and praises the merits of free markets and privatization. Last year, Machado's presidential campaign was mostly Evita. The press conference was all Thatcher. In her closing remarks, Machado said that the interests of 'the people of Venezuela, democratic governments in the Western Hemisphere, and certainly investors' were all aligned. 'This is a win-win situation.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
MAGA lawmaker expresses concern over Trump admin's mass deportation agenda
Donald Trump's administration has sought to portray its immigration crackdown as immensely popular and opposed only by liberal extremists. But as it turns out, the disturbing scenes and stories of agents doggedly pursuing immigrants and deporting them with abandon is making even some of the president's staunch supporters queasy. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., expressed horror over the detention and potential deportation of a Venezuelan man named Gregory Sanabria, who human rights organizations say was tortured under Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro's regime. The Trump administration recently rescinded temporary protection for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans who came to the U.S. under a Biden-era program. And fears about what this could mean for communities where large numbers of these immigrants reside have caused some GOP lawmakers in these districts — such as Diaz-Balart — to essentially plead with the administration for mercy. 'I'm increasingly concerned with the growing cases of people in the United States who have fled oppressive regimes and are being detained and held for possible deportation. Cases like Sanabria's, and so many others with legitimate claims of persecution, require a thorough review,' Diaz-Balart wrote on X on Sunday while sharing his letter, which specifically asks Noem to 'judiciously review' Sanabria's case and expresses concern that he might be forced to live under the Maduro regime again. There's a growing trend of Trump supporters reckoning with the reality of his immigration agenda and being taken aback by its apparent disregard for immigrants' humanity. Podcaster Joe Rogan and boxer Ryan Garcia are two of the most prominent Trump-friendly voices who have denounced the president's mass deportation agenda. And other examples abound. Florida businessman Vincent Scardina, who said he voted for Trump last year, gained attention after he got choked up during an NBC News interview in which he explained the emotional toll inflicted by the detention of one-third of his workers. And last month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a story about a couple who say they voted for Trump but are now outraged after their green card-holding son was placed in detention. Indeed, many of the president's critics predicted that his anti-immigrant agenda would have far-reaching impacts that stood a high chance of devastating many of his own supporters. Belatedly as it seems, some people are beginning to realize just how prescient those predictions were. This article was originally published on
TimesLIVE
3 days ago
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
Trump administration weighs adding 25 African countries to travel ban
US President Donald Trump's administration is considering significantly expanding its travel restrictions by potentially banning citizens of 36 additional countries — including 25 from Africa — from entering the US, according to an internal state department cable seen by Reuters. Earlier this month the Republican president signed a proclamation that banned the entry of citizens from 12 countries, saying the move was needed to protect the US against "foreign terrorists" and other national security threats. The directive was part of an immigration crackdown Trump launched this year at the start of his second term, which has included the deportation to El Salvador of hundreds of Venezuelans suspected of being gang members, as well as efforts to deny enrolments of some foreign students from US universities and deport others. In an internal diplomatic cable signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, the state department outlined a dozen concerns about the countries in question and sought corrective action. "The department has identified 36 countries of concern that might be recommended for full or partial suspension of entry if they do not meet established benchmarks and requirements within 60 days," the cable sent out over the weekend said. The cable was first reported by the Washington Post.
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Trump's immigration enforcement record so far, by the numbers
June 17 - U.S. President Donald Trump has stepped up arrests of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, cracked down on unlawful border crossings and stripped legal status from hundreds of thousands of migrants since January 20. ARRESTS Trump won back the White House promising record numbers of deportations. A Trump administration budget document published last week said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aimed to deport 1 million immigrants per year. ICE has cast a wider net than under former President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, picking up more non-criminals and people with final deportation orders, including those coming to ICE offices for routine check-ins. ICE arrested more than 100,000 people suspected of violating immigration law from January 20 to the first week of June, according to the White House. The figure amounts to an average of 750 arrests per day - double the average over the past decade. Still, the pace of arrests remains far short of what Trump would need to deport millions of people. Top White House official Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration agenda, pressed ICE to escalate operations in late May. Miller set a quota for at least 3,000 arrests per day and told ICE leadership they should target anyone without legal status. The increased enforcement led to protests in Los Angeles and other cities. ICE last week ordered officers to generally refrain from immigration sweeps at farms, hotels, restaurants and meatpacking plants, but the Washington Post reported on Monday that the agency had rescinded the order. DETENTION ICE statistics show the number of people arrested by ICE with no other criminal charges or convictions and then detained rose from about 860 in January to 7,800 this month - an increase of more than 800%. Those arrested and detained with criminal charges or convictions also rose, but at a lower rate of 91%. ICE had more than 51,000 immigrants in custody as of June 1, well beyond its funded capacity of 41,500. A sweeping tax and spending bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in May would devote an estimated $150 billion to immigration enforcement. The massive funding boost would cover a White House request for 100,000 detention beds, according to analyses of the legislation. DEPORTATIONS The Trump administration has struggled to increase deportation levels even as it has opened new pathways to send migrants to countries other than their home country, such as sending Venezuelans to Mexico, El Salvador or Panama. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, said in late May that the administration had deported around 200,000 people over four months. The total appeared to lag deportations during a similar period under Biden, whose administration had 257,000 deportations from February-May 2024, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Biden's administration faced much higher levels of illegal immigration and quickly deported many of those crossing illegally, boosting deportation totals. DHS stopped issuing detailed statistical reports on immigration enforcement after Trump took office, which makes it harder to gauge the scope of the crackdown. STRIPPING LEGAL STATUS The Supreme Court in May allowed the Trump administration to proceed with terminating Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Venezuelans, paving the way for Trump to terminate it for other nations. TPS provides deportation relief and work permits to people already in the U.S. if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. The Trump administration rolled back a Biden-era extension of TPS for 521,000 Haitians so that it could expire in early August. The administration also ended the status for thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon, moves that take effect in the coming weeks. The Supreme Court earlier this month let the Trump administration proceed with stripping legal status from half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who entered under a Biden-era "parole" program. Trump said in March that he was weighing a similar move to revoke parole for Ukrainians. The administration in April began notifying people who entered legally under Biden using an app known as CBP One that their status had been revoked. BORDER SECURITY Trump issued a series of executive orders when he returned to the White House, implementing a broad ban on asylum for migrants encountered at the southern border and sending in troops to assist border security efforts. His measures built on some initiatives already under way by the end of Biden's tenure, including a similar asylum ban and a push to increase Mexican enforcement. The policies appear to have successfully reduced traffic. U.S. Border Patrol arrested 8,300 migrants at the southern border in February, U.S. government figures show, the lowest monthly level since 2000. Monthly figures are not available prior to 2000. The number of arrests in March and April was similar, showing a sustained drop. Migrant arrests are often used as a proxy to estimate illegal crossings although some migrants enter undetected. The February arrest total was a steep drop from the 141,000 migrants picked up in February 2024 before Trump returned to office and down from 29,000 in January, according to U.S. government figures.
