Maria Salazar Ad Lecturing Trump on Immigration Policy Backfires in Her District

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On September 17th, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) released a campaign ad in both English and Spanish in which she lectured President Donald Trump about immigration policy while standing in front of the White House.

In it, she suggested that some of his “immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” pointing to ICE data she claimed showed that 50% of detainees apprehended in July “had no criminal convictions or pending charges.”

“Be careful what your advisors are telling you on immigration policy,” she went on to warn, adding that “the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Towards the end of the clip, Salazar stressed that she wasn’t “talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land, and only you can do that.”

For those who missed it, watch:

Salazar is facing a tough reelection fight in a midterm election year. The Cook Political Report noted that “though Salazar has a history of overperforming the top of the ticket, Trump’s sinking approval rating in South Florida will be an anchor on the congresswoman.” On September 25th, it changed its race rating for the district from Likely R to Lean R.

Her Democratic opponent, ex-CBS News Miami anchor Eliott Rodriguez, has “made affordability and opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies central themes of his campaign.”

Initially, Trump’s criticisms of her over the ad were fairly mild:

Trump, who endorsed Salazar for reelection, said that he disagreed with the three-term representative but said he “understands” her position.

“She got a little bit soft on the border. I understand that. I understand that. But I just don’t happen to be there,” he said, insisting that support for his anti-immigration policies remained strong.

He also stated that it’s likely she wouldn’t have gotten elected in the first place without his support:

Some of the Hispanic voters in her district, however, were not so forgiving:

But many Latino voters in Salazar’s district said that she has misread their sentiment and that their support for Trump has not wavered. Their support for their congresswoman, however, has waned, they said — and the ad did nothing to restore their confidence.

“She’s out of line,” said Hector Rubio, a resident of Miami’s wealthy enclave of Key Biscayne. Rubio, a longtime Republican voter who supported Salazar in the past three races, said in Spanish that Trump “is doing what he can, and he could do even more.” As he watched his wife shop in the neighborhood’s busy farmers market on Saturday morning, Rubio advised Salazar to stick close to Trump.

[…]

“The people who voted for Trump — the 70 or so million — one of the reasons was because they wanted to get all the illegal people out of here,” said South Miami resident Richard Santos, 80, in an interview outside of the city’s iconic Versailles restaurant. Santos said that he voted for Salazar in the past but that he’s no longer supporting her because she challenged the president.

[…]

“She just did it because she wants to keep her seat in Congress,” said Julio Perez, 54, as he smoked a cigarette outside of Versailles alongside Santos.

Rodriguez told The Washington Post that he “was not expecting” the ad from his opponent, “but it tells me that they’re nervous.”

“She seems to have opened her eyes, but it’s too late. After you vote for all of this, after you vote to fund ICE, after you go ahead with Trump’s tariffs?” he went on to say.

While that’s something one would expect him to say, on this, Rodriguez has a point. The Community Note on the Spanish language version of Salazar’s ad that was posted to X provided what it called the “missing context” from it:

Missing Context: Rep. Salazar has voted with Trump’s stated position nearly 100% of the time, including votes for Republican bills that provided ICE and CBP with about $235 billion in new funding. At the time, she said passing the ICE funding bill was a “historic win!”

On Saturday, Trump ramped up his criticism of Salazar, reposting Truth Social posts from other users who were unhappy with her campaign actions, with some suggesting it was time for a new Republican to take her place (note: the Florida primary was held in August):

President Donald Trump on Saturday escalated his criticism of Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), amplifying a series of social media posts attacking the Florida Republican and, in multiple instances, calling for her replacement ahead of her election in just over a month.

Trump reposted more than a dozen messages criticizing Salazar on Truth Social, the president’s social media platform, including one user’s post that read: “So we need a NEW Republican to Replace Salazar.”

[…]

Other posts accused the three-term congressmember of betraying Trump — echoing long-standing criticism from MAGA that the Florida lawmaker is pro “amnesty” as an immigration policy, a characterization that she has repeatedly denied.

It appears that, in trying to appeal to “all sides” in the immigration debate in her district, Salazar has made things harder for herself. Trump hasn’t said whether he’s pulling his endorsement of her, but from the looks of things in FL-27, he still has a fair number of loyalists in the Hispanic community who will think twice about supporting Salazar in November.

– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –

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