Salazar ad cites July detention data, addresses Hispanic voters
A Florida Republican congresswoman whose Miami-area district is nearly three-quarters Hispanic released a 30-second campaign advertisement on September 17 directly challenging President Donald Trump on immigration enforcement. Representative María Elvira Salazar addressed Trump in the second person, warning that some of his immigration efforts had “gone too far.”
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in the ad, according to The Guardian. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.”
The ad also addresses Hispanic voters in her district. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” Salazar said in the ad. “You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”
Trump won the district by a 15-percentage point margin in 2024 after a campaign in which he promised to carry out “mass deportations.” Salazar won re-election that year by 20 percentage points. The Guardian reported that, while the Trump administration has implied that those targeted would be undocumented immigrants who committed crimes in the United States, a substantial portion of the people arrested since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 have no criminal record.
This year, Salazar faces a more competitive contest. Her Democratic challenger is Eliott Rodriguez, a former television news anchor. A poll conducted for his campaign late last month found the two candidates tied, according to The Guardian.
First elected in 2020, Salazar has championed the Dignity Act, an immigration reform proposal in the House of Representatives that would create a pathway for some undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status.
The advertisement comes as Republican lawmakers have sought to create distance from Trump ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats are seeking to retake both the House and the Senate. Gas prices are high due to the war with Iran, and Trump’s public approval — including his handling of immigration — is low, according to The Guardian. The reporting indicates Democrats increasingly believe their candidates are competitive even in heavily Republican seats.