TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Trump administration’s decision last week to revoke temporary legal status for thousands of Cuban immigrants is putting Cuban American Republicans, most of whom vocally support the president, in the difficult political position of either backing an end to a popular program in their community — or disagreeing with Trump.
President Joe Biden started the so-called humanitarian parole process for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants. It created a framework used by more than 500,000 people from those countries to stay in the U.S. for up to two years if they had a financial sponsor. Of the four migrant population groups covered, the biggest by far are Cubans.
Miami-Dade County is home to the largest populations of each migrant group in the country, including more than 1 million Cuban Americans. That group over the past few decades has amassed significant political clout within the Republican Party.
Guillermo Grenier, a Florida International University professor who helps lead the school’s Cuba Poll, the longest-running research project tracking the opinions of Cuban Americans in South Florida, said that when migrants come from Cuba they are not always familiar with the politics in the United States, but enter a Cuban American community that is overwhelmingly Republican-leaning.
“They say ‘I just know the Republican Party is the party of the Cubans,’” he added of new arrivals to the country.
Miami-Dade, the largest county in Florida by population, has increasingly skewed Republican in recent years after long being a Democratic stronghold. The county first flipped from Democrat to Republican during Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2022 re-election campaign, and Trump won the county easily in 2024. In Florida, Trump received 70% of the overall vote from Cuban Americans, a vast majority of whom live in Miami-Dade County.
This has led to a significant number of Cuban American Republicans from the area being elected to Congress and the Florida Legislature, both of which are now in a thorny political position after the Trump administration moved to end the program. The changes are set to take effect April 24.
“You can ask me about any of my bills, which I’m very proud of,” said Florida state Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Cuban American Miami Republican who tried to brush off several questions from NBC News about the policy. “The best way to reach out is through email.”
U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., the daughter of Cuban exiles, tried to thread the needle, both blaming Biden’s immigration policies and saying that the Trump administration should not automatically punish those affected by the ending of the program.
“Trump is cleaning up Biden’s political mess, and the legal limbo the Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans are facing is entirely Biden’s fault,” she posted on X. “He fooled them. They came here fleeing failed, communist countries believing in Biden’s empty promises.”
“The Trump administration should take this under consideration and not punish them for Biden’s mistakes,” she added. “Let’s give them the opportunity to apply for the protections they were promised.”
Her office directed NBC News to the social media post when asking about her position on the program. A spokesman did not know if she had spoken to the White House about the change.
U.S. Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Mario Díaz-Balart, Cuban American Republicans who represent seats that include Miami-Dade County, did not return requests seeking comment about the program or whether they expressed any reservations to the Trump administration.
Beyond half the Miami-Dade congressional delegation being Cuban American Republican, there are more than a dozen Cuban Americans serving in the Florida Legislature, including Republican state House Speaker Danny Perez, a first-generation Cuban American.
None of the state-level elected Republican Cuban Americans NBC News asked about the Trump administration’s decision returned requests seeking comment.
Grenier, the FIU professor, said that part of the reason is likely due to the difficult politics of the issue, and the fact that Republicans have traditionally supported policies backed by Cuban Americans.
“The Cubans have always been the golden children of the immigration community,” he said of the group’s political clout and position in past immigration debates relative to other groups.
He said that if the parole program were to be discontinued, he would expect that there’d be a backup program in place, especially for Cubans, and that the rug would not be pulled so abruptly.
“But that clearly is not what happened,” he said. “This is basically following the immigration model of the [Trump] administration, which is to cut off immigrants and send them back once they are here. … No one anticipated this was going to happen.”
In her notice in the Federal Register, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that the administration was ending the program because it had no “significant benefit.”
“These programs do not serve a significant public benefit, are not necessary to reduce levels of illegal immigration, did not sufficiently mitigate the domestic effects of illegal immigration, are not serving their intended purpose, and are inconsistent with the Administration’s foreign policy goals,” she wrote.
The Trump administration’s decision to end the parole program also comes as Marco Rubio has taken over as the first Cuban American secretary of state. Rubio was a longtime Republican politician from the Miami-area, serving as speaker of the Florida House before joining the U.S. Senate in 2010.
Much of his political career has been defined by a hawkishness toward Latin America, particularly Cuba, but he has not yet issued any public comments on the decision to end the parole program, and the State Department, which did not make the policy change, did not return a request seeking comment.
“He is in the Cabinet, so I would expect a little extra style points from him,” Grenier said of Rubio. “Republicans are reading the tea leaves on the program and saying stuff like, ‘It’s Biden’s fault and Trump is trying to clean it up.’ They are throwing blame around, but no one wants to buck Trump.”
Grenier said it’s hard to assess if there will be political fallout for Republicans from the Trump administration decision, in part because many Cuban Americans view themselves as staunch Republicans who support the party no matter what.
“Now Trump is pulling policies that helped Cuban Americans, will that have an impact? I don’t know at this point,” he said. “Many view themselves as Republicans first, Cuban Americans second. They follow the Republican Party and don’t vote on Cuba.”
“In the past, our polls have found that Cuba can be like the 4th, 5th, 6th, at one point 8th, most important thing out of 10,” he added.
While the ending of the program affects four different migrant populations, Grenier says any realistic pushback on the changes would have to come from one place: Cuban Americans.
“Cubans are the only ones who have the political power to step up and oppose this,” he said. “And so far they are not.”
