By james art 
Miami (AP) – in Hialeah, Florida, a city that is 95% Spanish, only three residents appeared at a recent municipal council meeting to speak against partnership with the federal government to implement immigration laws.
Police departments in Hyallea, where three of four people were born abroad and Coral Gablels, with the greater part of the Spaniards, mainly of Cuban origin, have concluded agreements with the US immigration and the application of customs with very few visible discounts.
The doubling of President Donald Trump’s immigration arrests and an increase in deportations can have a disproportionate impact on South Florida, the home of some of the largest communities in the Nation of Cubans, Venezuelans and other Latinos. But the reaction here to Trump’s repression was much more induced than in his first term, reflecting both the right change of Latin American voters and the belief among some that restrictive border measures were needed.
“I understand that some people feel a little betrayed because most of us voted,” says Frank Aylon, a 41-year-old Miami sales representative. “I feel that many of these people accept it very personally.
Ailon sounded Trump’s attacks against former President Joe Biden, whose administration saw record illegal border crossings before falling until the end of his term. Once he was critical of Trump’s 2020, Aylon now says he thinks the president had the most relevant start of a term he has ever seen.
The political change is beginning to stick
When, in 2017, Miami-Dad County ordered prison staff to keep people suspected of being in the US illegally, dozens were arranged to speak against the public meeting order, with some shouting “shame for you.” Legislators, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, then a junior senator in California, joined major protests in front of an immigrant detention facility.
Now in Trump’s second term, the protest movement has been split. But there was also a broader political change in the community of South Florida and Latin.
While Harris in the 2024 presidential election won more than half of Spanish voters, this support has slightly decreased from approximately 6 to 10 Spanish voters, which Biden won in 2020, approximately half of Latin American men voted for Harris, from about 6 to 10 who went to Biden.
In November 7 elections to 10 Spanish voters in Florida, they said they preferred the number of immigrants allowed to seek asylum in the United States when they arrived at the US border, according to AP Votcast. This was in line with Florida voters as a whole.
In 2024, Trump won not only the Miami-Dad County, but also the Central Florida districts in Seminol and Oseola, where many Venezuells immigrated and committed an attack in the highly Pueto-Rican regions of Pennsylvania. He also turned several borderline counts in southern Texas, which have been democratic bastions for decades.
What initially catapulted Trump’s popularity in South Florida was his position on socialist governments, who many exile and their families fled, along with his focus on raising growth and reducing prices. But at a rally in Miami days, before announcing his third offer to the White House in November 2022, Trump said that, contrary to the faith of some, the Spaniards like their vows to break up on illegal immigration.
“When I talked about the border, do you know what are the biggest fans of this? (They) were the Spaniards, the Latinos,” Trump said. “They knew more about the border than everyone. They knew more about it. Everyone said,” Oh, he would hurt the Spaniards. “In fact, it turned out to be the opposite.”
Barbara Channels, a 49-year-old certified nursing assistant who lives in Hyallea, said her mother had brought her as a young Honduras girl with a visa and exceeded him. They took them many years to legalize their status and be able to bring other family members.
“That is why I fully agree that you need to remove illegal immigrants from the United States.” When you enter a visa is a completely different story. “
Canales says that although the Republican president makes his immigration his signature, previous democratic administrations are equally ready to implement the laws of immigration and to deport people who have built their lives in a former US President Barack, who has nicknamed the Department of Principal.
“The reality is that if you violate the rules here, you have to undergo the consequences,” Channel said.
Miami’s Cuban exiles are separated
Miami is especially known for its community of Cuban exiles, who initially escaped from the government of communist leader Fidel Castro. About two -thirds of the Cuban voters in Florida supported Trump in 2024, according to AP Votecast, while about a third supported Harris.
The Cubans have long been proud to arrive here legally through several refugees and family programs and have been able to get green cards easier than people from other countries, thanks to a law of the Cold War era.
After Obama in 2017 ended the policy of the wet leg, a dry leg, which believes that every Cuban who stepped on the dry land should be an automatic legitimate arrival, the Cubans leaving for the United States have found more obstacles.
This did not stop many from coming.
Between 2021 and 2022, the US government recorded the largest flight of Cuban exiles after Mariel’s boat in 1980, when nearly 125,000 Cubans came to the United States for a period of six months.
“We all support legal immigration.
Trump took support from new Cuban immigrants such as Luis Bulart, at 85, arrived in 2015, received his citizenship in 2022 and gave his first vote to the President for Trump in 2024. Bulart recently said he trusts the president and believes that the Republican Party can better deal with immigration.
“I think the challenges are to come. But he is able to solve all the problems,” Bulart said.
But these changes in politics mean that more recent arrivals have a more difficult path to legal status than the previous generations.
Julian Paden, 79, who said he was imprisoned in Cuba, arrived decades ago when President Jimmy Carter negotiated Castro’s release of hundreds of political prisoners in the United States. He said he felt strongly against Trump and considers his actions anti -democratic.
He visits Domino Park, located on Kale Ocho in the iconic little Havana in Miami, where many players sitting on tables of four people, on the last day, supported Trump. Padan said he usually holds his thoughts on himself, unless he was asked for his opinion. An employee of the park first told a reporter of the Associated Press that no political issues were resolved in this park to avoid arguments. But when they asked him which directive banned this, the employee said he would understand and then allow the interviews to continue.
“They will keep people,” Paron said, looking at the park. “Don’t they know that people are still running away from communism?”
Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press