Latinas for Trump' Co-Founder Warns Immigration Will Cost G.O.P. the Midterms [View all]

Source: NY Times

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown over the last year has gone from uncomfortable to untenable for Ileana Garcia, a Republican state senator in Florida.

A Transportation Security Administration officer at the Tallahassee airport overheard her speaking Spanish and asked whether Ms. Garcia, who was born in Miami, was an American citizen. She worried for the first time that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might stop her son, a young adult, because he looks Hispanic. Constituents have asked her for help finding immigrant relatives arrested by ICE.

Ms. Garcia, 56, has had enough. The Republican Party is in trouble, she said in an interview, predicting that it will lose this year’s midterm elections if the White House does not soon reconsider its harsh immigration enforcement tactics.

“We should not be afraid as a party to speak up, to course correct,” she said. That was before Saturday, when Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old I.C.U. nurse who was protesting in Minneapolis, and federal officials sought to portray him as a “domestic terrorist.” Ms. Garcia said she was “dumbfounded.” “It’s gone too far,” she said. “What happened Saturday was abhorrent.”

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/ileana-garcia-trump-immigration-crackdown.html