Salazar Warns Trump's Immigration Push Risks Hispanic Support

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., told CBS News on Sunday that President Trump's immigration enforcement is straining the Republican Party's standing with Hispanic voters, a bloc she says helped deliver his 2024 win, according to the New York Post.

Salazar, who spent three decades at the Spanish-language network Telemundo before entering Congress, made the case in a new campaign ad and then repeated it to Trump directly in a phone call, the Post reported.

What did Salazar say about Trump's immigration crackdown?

Salazar said Trump's Latino supporters "feel betrayed" by the scale of recent enforcement, according to the Post's account of her ad. She told "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan that she was not attacking the president but flagging a gap in what he is being told. "I think that some of his advisers are compromising his legacy, and I think it's my duty not to attack — there are no attacks here," Salazar said. "They're just forewarning him and advising him, as a member of Congress from the South Florida area, that some of his advisers are just not presenting the whole picture."

What specific data did Salazar cite on migrant detentions?

Salazar's ad noted that roughly half of the 50,000 migrants detained in July had no criminal record, per the Post's reporting. The figure was not independently broken down by offense type or immigration status in the source material, and the Post did not cite an underlying government dataset for the 50,000 total.

How did Trump respond to Salazar's warning?

Salazar told "Face the Nation" that Trump was "very receptive" when the two spoke after her ad aired, according to the program's promotional post cited by the Post. She said she hoped he would act on what she raised, though neither Salazar nor the Post described any specific policy change Trump committed to making.

Why does Salazar distinguish between different groups of migrants?

Salazar drew a distinction she said should guide enforcement priorities, contrasting "narco and the nanny and the gangster and the gardener," the Post reported. The phrasing frames her argument: that sweeping detention numbers can obscure differences between people she casts as criminal targets and those in long-standing service or agricultural jobs.

What does this signal about Hispanic support for Trump?

Salazar credited Trump for winning over Hispanic voters in the first place, the Post noted, citing exit polling that showed Trump outperforming then-Vice President Kamala Harris with the group in 2024. The Post's account did not include newer polling data measuring any shift in Hispanic support since the July detentions, so the durability of the erosion Salazar describes remains unverified by public survey data in the available reporting. Her comments mark one of the more direct public warnings from a sitting Republican member of Congress representing a heavily Hispanic district.

Salazar represents Florida's 27th Congressional District, which includes parts of Miami-Dade County.

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