Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., attends a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2026. Salazar warned that President Trump’s immigration policies could drive Latino voters away from the GOP.
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Heather Diehl/Getty Images
MIAMI – In the heart of the Little Havana neighborhood is Máximo Gómez Park, also known as Domino Park. Cuban Americans here play games of dominoes to escape the pressures of daily life.
But what started as a typical day at the park last week took a twist: Miami police arrested a player in the middle of a game after an argument with a city employee. That prompted other stakeholders to raise concerns about evictions, sparking a broader political debate over whether President Trump or former President Biden was responsible for the rising cost of living.
“It’s Biden,” said Alejandro Torres, a Republican voter.
“It’s Trump,” replied Ricardo Carracedo, who plans to vote for the Democrats in the midterm elections.
This same divide is found in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, a Miami-Dade County seat that is more than 70 percent Latino. It’s a warning to Republicans, whose victories in 2024 rested largely on this crucial electorate.
That year, Trump narrowed Democrats’ margin among Latino voters to just three points, down from 25 points four years earlier, according to the Pew Research Center. Cuban Americans, the largest Latino group in the district, are reliable Trump supporters. But many of their friends and relatives were swept away by the government’s deportation program. A rift among them could signal broader problems for Latino support for Republican candidates.
Representative María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American Republican in her third term, sounded the alarm. Last month, Salazar filmed a television commercial outside the White House warning President Trump that he had “gone too far” on immigration.
“The same Hispanics who helped get you to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said.
Trump fired back at Salazar after the ad. On his TruthSocial account, he shared a post in which another user called her a “backstabber.”
Salazar told NPR that she did not consider the comments to be attacks, saying she later spoke to the president.
“I told him, ‘You know, what I’m telling you is how my people feel,'” she said. “It’s Democracy where we say to the boss, ‘Hey, this is what’s happening in my neck of the woods.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
Salazar’s reading of the effects of Trump’s policies may be correct. Polling firm Equis Research found in a recent survey of registered voters who identify as Hispanic or Latino that if the congressional election were held today, voters would choose the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate by a margin of 57 to 31.
At a Salazar campaign event last Thursday, friends Mirla Loredo and Ramona Tunon were divided on whether they sided with his or Trump’s views.
“He, I tell you,” Loredo said in Spanish.
“I like his position,” Tunon said.
Salazar has opposed aggressive immigration policies in the past. For several years, she has proposed legislation she calls the Dignity Act to block deportations of immigrants considered pillars of their communities — like hotel, construction and farm workers.
Still, Carracedo, the Domino Park Democratic voter, said he would vote for a straight blue ticket. He said Salazar’s recent campaign against Trump’s aggressive deportations was too little and too late.
“I’m not going to vote for her, because at the eleventh hour she’s standing up for Hispanics. But all the time she supported Trump and the money Trump wanted for ICE,” or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said in his native Spanish.
Trump, he says, reminds him of the communist leaders he left behind in Cuba.
In the past, Republican messages about socialism have had a powerful impact on this district. But today, that message has lost some of its power, overshadowed by concerns about rising costs of living and evictions.
Eduardo Gamarra, a politics professor at Florida International University, says the malaise in the local economy has overshadowed all other problems.
“It’s probably the number one thing. And it concerns the entire electorate,” he said.
He said the second major problem is evictions, which have devastated some Miami businesses, losing workers and customers.
An opening for the Democrats
Florida Democratic congressional candidate Eliott Rodriguez campaigns at CAO Bakery and Cafe October 16, 2026 in Miami. Rodriguez, like Salazar, is a former television journalist of Cuban origin.
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Salazar’s Democratic challenger, Eliott Rodriguez, is a former broadcast journalist with Cuban roots like Salazar. He says he wants to revamp the immigration court system and restore federal food assistance after cuts that hurt voters.
He admits, however, that his party has a lot of ground to make up after largely leaving Florida.
“One of the biggest mistakes Democrats make in Florida is thinking that Florida is unwinnable. But I disagree.”
Polls in the district have tilted more toward Democrats in recent weeks, but Republicans are still favored. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report called the race “lean Republican.”
Gamarra, a politics professor, says the Republican Party will have to rely on its political infrastructure to achieve victory.
“They’re not going to win on these issues… They’re going to win on turnout… the enthusiasm is on the Democrats’ side. But the Republicans have a machine.”
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