A Hispanic Republican in Florida is facing her FAFO moment

Florida Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, a Republican who represents Miami, made news yesterday when she posted an ad condemning Donald Trump's immigration purge.

"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," she said, adding: "the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed.”

"Feel betrayed" is one way of putting it. Another is FAFO.

Especially for Salazar.

In her ad, Salazar appears outraged by the fact that half of ICE detainees have no criminal record. (The actual figure is over 70 percent.) She is outraged, I guess, despite supporting a candidate who promised to stop "the poisoning of the blood of our country," and despite Republican conventioneers waving signs that read "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW." Salazar is outraged by the injustice, I suppose, despite voting for legislation that funded ICE to the tune of $75 billion, some of which the agency is now using to purchase electric shock gloves.

USA Today's Rex Huppke reminded us of two more things Salazar did before this week, when she found the courage to clutch her pearls. After Trump's victory, she said “the Trump administration is not going to be targeting those people who have been here for more than five years that have American kids, that don't have criminal records, that have been working in the economy and paying taxes. I am sure that they're going to hone in on the criminals.”

"Oops," Huppke said.

In the summer of 2025, Salazar toured "Alligator Alcatraz," the notorious and now-shuttered immigrant detention facility in south Florida. At the time, Amnesty International had determined that conditions there, "including routine and prolonged use of shackles and retention in a 'box' described as a 2x2 foot cage-like structure," constituted torture.

Yet Salazar said it “met the highest standards,” Huppke said.

(Salazar told Florida Politics then: "Of course, no one likes to be inside a cage, but I want to tell you that the cages were clean. I sat in one of the beds. They were soft. They had three metal toilets with like a little wall to cover people when they’re doing their business. They had two telephones where they can call their attorneys or their loved ones. ... Then they took us to another recreational area, also caged in. No one likes to be in a cage, of course.")

When Trump was popular, injustice was OK!

Now that he's not, it's an outrage!

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Salazar says the Hispanics who helped elect Donald Trump now "feel betrayed." But the real outrage is facing the consequences of her choices. She believed MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW did not include Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County who vote Republican, and who can pass for white, despite that Hispanics are all the same to this president. ICE is snatching Cuban-Americans off the streets. It's sending them to Africa. Salazar chose to commit to whiteness. That commitment has backfired. She fucked around. Now she's finding out.

Trump's net approval among working-class Latinos was plus-1 against Kamala Harris. Today, according to poll averages from Pew and CNN, it's negative-42, CNN's Harry Enten said. It's not the economy. It's the purge. In 2024, Trump's net approval against Harris on immigration was plus-9. Today, it's negative-47. "There has been a massive, massive backlash," Enten said.

A Republican volunteer who has been door-knocking across Miami-Dade County contacted Politico and said that "the anger over mass deportations [is] a 'big problem' [for the GOP] and added that 'people are mad as hell at us.' The person said Salazar’s ad showed she understood she’s the 'canary in the coal mine' when it comes to Hispanics abandoning" the Republicans.

Every Hispanic voter who supported Donald Trump in 2024 made the same or similar calculation that María Elvira Salazar did – that he couldn't possibly mean them or their loved ones, and that he wanted only to deport "the criminals" who came to America "the wrong way." They did not want to believe the truth, which is that, for Trump, their identity as Hispanics is the real crime, not their actions. Two years later, the purge has shattered their illusions (or delusions). Indeed, the force of the blast seems to be radicalizing them. Salazar, who won re-election by 20 points in a district that Trump won by 15, is now running scared.

They aren't the only ones finding out.

So is the GOP.

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Correction

I spelled Rex Huppke's name wrong. My apologies, especially Rex Huppke.