By the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Mike Fernández, a major political donor and healthcare executive, is not the first person to call on Miami’s Cuban-American politicians in Washington, D.C., to do more to oppose what he described as President Trump’s “posture of cruelty towards immigrants.” But let’s be frank: The voice of a billionaire like Fernández in a political system run by money — think of the millions that Elon Musk spent to help reelect Trump — rings louder in political circles.
Fernández’s open letter published in the Herald this week to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and three Miami members of Congress wasn’t just an exercise in venting his frustrations. Fernández, who lives in Coral Gables, told a Herald reporter he’s willing to spend money to back his efforts and that he’s paid for two full-page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal blasting Trump’s actions and calling on a group of Republican senators to “turn back the tide of tyranny.”
“If you can’t find your voice at this moment, or tell the difference between one dictator and another, then perhaps it is time to make room for others who can and have a vision that you may lack,”
Fernández wrote in the letter to Rubio and U.S. Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz-Balart. Those three members of Congress represent many of the Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans living in Miami-Dade County who are on the verge of losing legal status that’s been revoked by the Trump administration.
Rubio has done the most shocking about-face on protections for Venezuelans.
After years of fighting to expand Temporary Protected Status to cover Venezuelans fleeing the Nicolás Maduro regime, court documents show Rubio, a former U.S. senator, endorsing the Trump administration’s move to end those protections, the Herald reported.
After publicly welcoming the Biden administration’s 2021 decision to grant TPS for Venezuelans — and then requesting an expansion so more Venezuelans could qualify — Rubio wrote in January that “Designating Venezuela under TPS does not champion core American interests or put America and American citizens first.”
That’s the same Rubio who told Biden in 2021 that sending Venezuelans back to their country could amount to a “very real death sentence,” the Herald reported.
Not much has changed in the Latin American country — in fact, the Maduro regime has only gotten worse after stealing a presidential election. What has likely changed are Rubio’s political calculations as Trump’s secretary of state.
So much for the hope that having the Miami-born son of Cuban exiles in the president’s Cabinet would make a big difference for those migrants.
As the Herald reported in January, Salazar, Diaz-Balart and Gimenez have said they support TPS for Venezuelans in some manner. But, as their own words show, they are walking a tightrope to not upset the president.
In a joint statement in late January, they wrote they stood “in solidarity with the Venezuelan people” but also claimed that Trump “has shown steadfast and unwavering solidarity with the Venezuelan people” by, among other actions, imposing sanctions on the Maduro regime.
In February, Diaz-Balart wrote a letter to Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem urging her not to deport Venezuelans without criminal records. Gimenez wrote in another letter about TPS to Noem saying that she should “make a decision that individually provides a solution to those who contribute to our country and respect the rule of law,” the Herald reported.
Salazar, in response to Fernández’s letter, told the Herald: “My whole time in Congress, I have worked across the aisle to fight for my Dignity Act, the only bipartisan immigration reform law in Congress that provides real solutions to our immigration crisis.” She has also said she’s reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to advocate on behalf of those fleeing oppressive regimes and political turmoil.
Yet she also attempted to put the blame on Biden, and not Trump, for the predicament Venezuelans, Haitians, Cuban and Nicaraguans are facing, writing on X last month they believed “in Biden’s empty promises.”
We’re glad that Miami’s members of Congress support those migrants, but their apparent fear of crossing Trump makes them look as if they are speaking from both sides of their mouth. As Fernández wrote, “…we are not measured by loyalty to a party or president but by loyalty to the Constitution and to principles, even when they cost something.”
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