Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar dramatically warned President Trump that his administration’s sprawling immigration crackdown is fraying the GOP’s standing with Hispanic voters, who emerged as a critical swing vote in 2024.
Salazar (R-Fla.), who spent three decades at the Spanish-language network Telemundo, discussed these concerns with Trump after she cut a stark ad arguing that his Latino voters feel betrayed and noting that half of the 50,000 migrants detained in July didn’t have a rap sheet.
“I think that some of his advisers are compromising his legacy, and I think it’s my duty not to attack — there are no attacks here,” Salazar explained to CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“They’re just forewarning him and advising him, as a member of Congress from the South Florida area, that some of his advisers are just not presenting the whole picture.”
The Sunshine State Republican underscored that there’s a difference between “narco and the nanny and the gangster and the gardener.”
Still, she credited the president for being able to win over Hispanic voters in the first place. Exit polls indicated that Trump beat then-Vice President Kamala Harris with Hispanic and Latino men in the 2024 contest.
“It was a very good conversation,” the congresswoman recounted about her discussion with Trump. “I told him exactly what you just repeated. ‘Sir, you have this moment in history where you can keep the pot of gold that you brought to the GOP in 2024.’”
“‘No other president was able to convince the Hispanics to vote 55 points for a GOP president. Please preserve that fortune that you have brought to the party.’”
The congresswoman underscored that her goal as a first-generation American and daughter of refugees from Cuba is to “preserve the American values that are entrenched in the GOP.”
Salazar also warned that the stakes of the midterm are high due to the rising support for socialism in the US.
Last month, she had caused a stir by blasting Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela, railing in an X post against how the country’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez has been left in power despite her ties to Nicolas Maduro.
She then deleted that post and replaced it with one praising the development as a “good deal” and giving a more carefully worded take on the situation.
“Trump has forced the bad actors to create the platform for the good actors to come in,” Salazar reflected. “I do know that the United States is in the business of bringing liberty and democracy to our neighbors, and transition will occur. So Delcy is just a necessary evil for now to stabilize.”
