“Betrayed. We feel betrayed. More than betrayed,” Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus said Monday in response to the news that President Donald Trump’s administration is ending temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in this country. Venezuelan Americans who voted for Trump in November must especially be feeling used.
Ferro’s frustration was shared by three South Florida Republican lawmakers. Reps. Carlos Giménez, Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, in a rare public break from Trump, warned that terminating TPS would be disastrous and argued that most Venezuelans in the U.S. “have integrated into our communities, respecting our laws and contributing to the prosperity of our great country.”
Venezuelan Americans who voted for Trump in November must especially be feeling used.
In Doral, Florida, where 40% of the population has roots in Venezuela, Trump won more that 60% of the Latino vote, contributing to the Republican Party’s steady gains among South Florida’s Latino electorate.
But now that Trump’s back in power, thanks in part to the Latino vote, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tied TPS to crime and gang activity. “The TPS program has been abused, and it doesn’t have integrity right now,” Noem said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Folks from Venezuela that have come into this country are members of TdA. Venezuela purposely emptied out their prisons, emptied out their mental health facilities, and sent them to the United States of America.”
TdA, short for Tren de Aragua, is a transnational criminal gang that originated in Venezuela and in recent years has expanded into the U.S. Trump and his allies have repeatedly mentioned the group to justify hard-line immigration policies, but Ferro noted, only about 600 TPS recipients have been connected to TdA, “just 0.04% of our community.”
“We are not here because we came as tourists. We are here because we got kicked out from our country because … there is a cruel dictatorship in Venezuela,” Ferro said in Monday’s news conference, referring to Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Giménez, Díaz-Balart and Salazar, in a joint statement from last week, reaffirmed their opposition to Maduro and, despite echoing Trump’s rhetoric about TdA, made it clear that “it is still not safe for many to return” and vowed to “do everything possible to ensure that those seeking freedom from persecution and oppression are protected.”
Roughly 1 million people are in the United States on temporary protected status, because of civil unrest and natural disasters in their home country. According to the Miami Herald, at least half a million Venezuelans are here on TPS, and nearly 350,000 now face possible deportation when their status ends in April. These Venezuelans are trying to rebuild lives in the U.S. under TPS. Trump has created an overwhelming sense of fear and uncertainty. Carlos Carpio, a 50-year-old Venezuelan immigrant living in Chicago, described the emotional toll after the news of TPS ending.
“There’s so much fear over what Trump has been saying, and now what he’s doing,” Carpio told NBC News. “Since the day Trump became president, I live in fear.”
The fear is compounded by growing confusion over Trump’s shifting stance on Venezuela. Axios reported two days before Inauguration Day that Trump wanted regime change in Venezuela. Yet in just the third week of this term, Trump is negotiating with Maduro’s government, securing the release of six American prisoners while also arranging deportation flights to Venezuela.
If Trump’s gains in Doral and South Florida were built on his hard-line stance against Maduro, then what happens now that he is negotiating with the very government his administration reportedly wanted to remove? Ending TPS and deporting Venezuelans back to Maduro’s regime forces a question that Republicans haven’t had to answer before: whether Trump’s Latino support was about lasting political alignment or a reaction to specific political and economic conditions. An early sign will be whether Venezuelan voters in places like Doral are angry enough at Trump to turn against him. Since the day Trump became president, I live in fear. During the 2024 campaign, as Trump made the outrageous arguments that TdA was taking over apartment complexes in cities like Aurora and Chicago, many Latino voters — Venezuelans included — continued to support him. For some of them, their focus was the economy. Others believed Democrats to be too soft on socialism. But underlying it all, Latino political strategist Mike Madrid told ProPublica after the election, was their belief “that they are playing by the rules and that they will be rewarded for it.” Given Republicans’ history, Madrid said, “they’re allowing themselves to believe that for no good reason.” South Florida Republicans now find themselves caught between loyalty to Trump and the backlash from the Venezuelan community. Giménez, Díaz-Balart and Salazar have voiced their opposition but, will they keep pushing against Trump or fall back in line? Trump’s move to end TPS suggests that he believes his Latino support is locked in. But the betrayal that Venezuelan American voters are feeling may be an issue that causes them to respond by punishing Republicans going forward. If Trump’s gains in Doral and South Florida were built on his hard-line stance against Maduro, then what happens now that he is negotiating with the very government his administration reportedly wanted to remove? Ending TPS and deporting Venezuelans back to Maduro’s regime forces a question that Republicans haven’t had to answer before: whether Trump’s Latino support was about lasting political alignment or a reaction to specific political and economic conditions. An early sign will be whether Venezuelan voters in places like Doral are angry enough at Trump to turn against him.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. 
