Republicans worked hard in recent years to court Venezuelan American voters in Florida, convinced that their party’s focus on law and order and attacks on socialism could win over the fast-growing group. Their efforts paid off in cities like Doral, west of Miami, where about 40 percent of residents are of Venezuelan origin.
Many Venezuelan Americans basked in the attention and became devoted to the politicians who bestowed it on them, especially President Trump.
Their admiration has mixed with surprise and hurt in recent weeks, though, after the Trump administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the United States, many of them in South Florida. The T.P.S. program allows migrants from certain unstable countries to live and work in the United States for a limited time; critics say it has allowed many migrants to stay indefinitely.
Now, Venezuelan Americans in Doral and beyond are trying to persuade the White House to change course before the 300,000 migrants lose T.P.S. in April. Their campaign is testing just how much political currency they have with Mr. Trump and other Republicans who had treated them as a key population.
Channeling their constituents’ concerns, elected leaders in at least three municipalities — Miami-Dade County, Miami and Doral — have passed symbolic measures in recent weeks urging the Trump administration to reverse its decision or find another way to help law-abiding Venezuelans stay legally.
So far, few Venezuelans who voted for Mr. Trump are abandoning him. Instead they are walking a fine line, supporting his fight against illegal immigration but contending that most Venezuelans with T.P.S. should not get caught up in it. Even though Mr. Trump derided programs like T.P.S. on the campaign trail, many Venezuelan American voters say they expected any crackdown to focus on unauthorized immigrants with criminal records.
Nowhere does the situation feel more urgent than in Doral, a city of about 75,000 nicknamed Doralzuela.
Once an out-of-the-way warehouse district west of Miami International Airport, the city has evolved over the last decade or so into an economic powerhouse. Office parks have sprung up, leading to the development of subdivisions, condos, schools and restaurants.
Mr. Trump knows Doral well: It is home to his Trump National Doral Golf Club, a point of pride for many Venezuelan Americans. But in interviews last week, several of them described feeling blindsided.
In particular, they said, the Trump administration’s suggestion that many Venezuelans with T.P.S. are members of the Tren de Aragua gang — a gross exaggeration — has stunned them.
“I’m a die-hard Trump Republican, but I feel defrauded,” said Isabel Martín, a real estate agent and insurance broker who also hosts a Spanish-language radio show in Doral. “Some bad people have come in, but they’re not all Tren de Aragua. There are very good people like you and me, hardworking people.”
Ms. Martín, 58, who immigrated 27 years ago, said she still backed Mr. Trump, but had conflicting feelings that she was unsure how to resolve. Last week, she was among a number of Venezuelans present when the Doral City Council passed a measure asking the federal government for a permanent immigration solution for Venezuelans.
Ms. Martín told council members that Doral could lose employers and workers alike if Venezuelan migrants, many of whom own or work for small businesses, lost their protected status.
Councilman Rafael Pineyro, a Republican who introduced the resolution, sought to disagree with the decision to end T.P.S. without antagonizing the White House.
“It’s not something that we’re looking to create a confrontation with President Trump,” Mr. Pineyro, a Venezuelan American who immigrated to Miami when he was 15, said at the meeting.
Rather, he said he hoped to “explain to the administration about what the real Venezuelan community is.”
Another council member is married to a Venezuelan; a third emigrated from the Dominican Republic. The mayor is Cuban American. The vice mayor, Maureen Porras, is an immigration lawyer who came to Miami from Nicaragua at age 7.
Ms. Porras said in an interview that in recent weeks, anxious Venezuelans had been inundating her law practice with questions about their options. She worries that essential workers may disappear from jobs at Doral’s restaurants and hotels.
“My fear is that it’s going to disrupt the economy as well as transform our communities, if we start seeing neighbors moving away,” she said. “It’s going to be very disruptive.”
At a public meeting on Thursday, Amaya Ariztoy, a Venezuelan American who has lived in South Florida for 25 years, told the Miami City Commission about her nephew, who came to the United States legally with a student visa and got a master’s degree at the University of Florida.
“He was working under T.P.S.,” she said. “He was paying his taxes. And now he’s forced to go back to a country that has no future, and also is a country that is under a dictatorship.”
Venezuelan Americans were aghast when Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, justified the decision to end T.P.S. by saying that conditions had improved in Venezuela. They also bristled when she said on “Fox and Friends” last month that letting Venezuelans with T.P.S. stay would allow them to “violate our laws for another 18 months,” suggesting that a vast majority were criminals.
Republican elected officials in Florida, aware that Venezuelan Americans represent a vocal and growing number of their constituents, have been supportive. Senator Rick Scott said the Venezuelan government continues to pose a threat to the United States. Miami’s three Cuban American members of the state’s congressional delegation wrote Ms. Noem letters urging her to decide whether Venezuelans can remain here on a case-by-case basis.
Miami’s influential Cuban exiles in particular have embraced newly arrived Venezuelans, seeing them as ideologically aligned because both groups fled left-wing leaders. Cubans have long benefited from special immigration privileges such as the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows them to apply for permanent residency after at least a year in the United States. No such benefit is available to Venezuelans or immigrants of other nationalities, though a Republican congresswoman from Miami has proposed one.
The decision to end T.P.S. affects only Venezuelans who received the protections in 2023. Just before Mr. Trump took office in January, the Biden administration extended their temporary legal status until October 2026; Ms. Noem revoked that extension.
A separate group of more than 250,000 Venezuelans received T.P.S. in 2021; their protected status is supposed to end in September, and the Trump administration has so far not announced plans to cut it off sooner.
“Shame on every Republican official who’s complicit, especially in Florida, in sending Venezuelans back to a nightmare,” Maria Corina Vegas, a Venezuelan American and Democratic state committeewoman, said in a news conference outside Miami City Hall last week. “You’re turning your backs on a community that trusted you, that fled tyranny in search of freedom. You will be remembered for this betrayal.”
Even as Venezuelan Americans voiced their dismay last week, state lawmakers approved legislation cracking down on illegal immigration enforcement. When Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, was recently asked about whether he supported ending T.P.S. for Venezuelans, he noted that “the people that voted for me are not on T.P.S. They are U.S. citizens.”
He conceded that the situation in Venezuela was “still bad” but said that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been guilty of “abusing” T.P.S. and that Mr. Trump was “getting the law right.”
“He’s going to get control over who is in this country,” Mr. DeSantis added. “You cannot have a situation where people are just pouring in willy-nilly.”
Gustavo Garagorry, the president of the Venezuelan American Republican Club Miami-Dade, said his support of Mr. Trump remained steadfast. People like him, who immigrated more than 20 years ago, are unaffected by ending the protections.
“President Trump is the president of Americans,” he said, “not the president of Venezuelans.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
