South Florida Hispanics sound off on Trump’s “massive deportations” comment

MIAMI – The political spotlight shined bright on South Florida this week. Besides the third Republican debate and Donald Trump’s rally in Hialeah, it is clear the G.O.P. is wooing the Hispanic vote.

“I like Donald Trump because he is very forward, we need a strong man like him (in Washington) said Rolando Longo, a Cuban exile who did attend Tuesday’s rally and considered it a privilege for Hialeah to have the former president here.

“When the issue of communism and socialism creeps into the discussion, everything changes for exiles in South Florida,” said Mike Madrid, a political analyst and expert on the Latino voter trend. Madrid says older Cuban American voters not only support the GOP but will choose Trump over any other candidate. 

“Trump is number one,” said Jesus Ovidez who also said he did not need to see the debate. According to him, many Cuban Americans in this city think like the former president.

Milly Herrera, 62, disagrees, “Let’s remember Trump also stopped the visas, the family reunification.”

Herrera is a Cuban American activist who has lived in Hialeah for over 50 years. She disliked a specific part of the former president’s speech, when he said, “…(on my first year) we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American History.”   

According to the U.S. Census, Hialeah is a city where more than 95% of the population are Hispanics and 74% are foreign-born. 

“If you open the border, who do you think will come in,” said Longo who agrees with Trump’s speech. 

Longo and many of his generation associate undocumented migration with terrorists, not Cubans or other nationalities fleeing communism.

“Should the border be secured, absolutely 100%, but is everyone in one classification of bad, no there’s good and bad in every culture, in every race,” said Herrera. 

“The important point is the issue that he (former President Trump) is running on which is border deportations.  Cuban Americans more than any other Latino subgroup support building a border wall,” said Madrid. 

The Trump campaign views Hispanics as the fastest-growing ethnic and racial group in the U.S. electorate, and the former president believes that immigration is a topic where they support him immensely.