'Anyone but Trump': Republicans face Latino backlash over immigration raids

DORAL: For nearly two years, US President Donald Trump's heavy-handed deportation drive has sown fear in immigrant communities and generated a flood of grim headlines and social media videos.

Now, with midterm elections looming, many Latino voters who helped propel Trump and his Republican Party to power in 2024 say they are fed up.

In southern Florida's Doral, a mostly Latino community near Miami that is also home to one of Trump's golf clubs, residents told AFP that fears of potential raids have left businesses short-staffed and classrooms with fewer pupils.

Known as "Doralzuela", the area is home to a large Venezuelan population and could be a bellwether of shifting Latino sentiment nationwide.

"I feel sad and disappointed," restaurant owner Maria Fernanda Perez told AFP.

"My thinking was that the economy would improve," the 32-year-old said of her vote for Trump.

Three of her employees had stopped showing up for work for fear of being deported, she said, while sales had fallen 40 per cent as people in the community cut back on going out.

"My whole family, all my friends are going through immigration proceedings, and they're no longer working, they're no longer going about their daily lives."

Trump campaigned on promises of a historic deportation drive, but emphasised targeting hardened criminals.

With more than 1,000 people being taken into immigration custody every day, many Latino voters feel misled.

Like other communities around the country, residents in Doral have begun exchanging messages to alert one another to the presence of immigration agents or someone being detained.

A New York Times and Siena College poll conducted last month showed that 66 per cent of Hispanic respondents disapproved of Trump's performance, while 78 per cent said they would prefer Democrats to take control of Congress from Republicans.

Perez declined to say how she would vote in the upcoming election, but said emphatically: "Anyone but Trump."

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Psychological pressure

Carlos Bermudez, a lawyer of Venezuelan origin, receives constant calls from desperate people going through immigration proceedings.

"They don't go out, they can't go to work... It's constant psychological pressure, and it affects the whole community," the 47-year-old told AFP.

Bermudez, who describes himself as a Republican, expressed concern about the party's increasingly "extreme" positions.

"I'm a Republican because I come from a country where communism, socialism took hold, and I don't want to continue with that ideology, but I don't agree with what the extreme wing of the party is doing now," he said.

Doral councilman Rafael Pineyro said he saw the crackdown's impact not only in his city but across southern Florida.

"There's uncertainty, there's fear... It's not just Doral, it's the whole Latino community in South Florida that's affected," he said from his office at city hall.

Pineyro, a Republican, also questioned the Trump administration's immigration strategy.

"This isn't right, because this isn't what was promised in 2024 when we were talking about (deporting) criminals," he said.

Trump's policies could undermine gains made by Republicans in recent years among Florida's Cuban, Venezuelan and other Latino voters, he warned.

"That opportunity has been slipping away more and more in recent months because of bad decisions, in my view, specifically when it comes to the economy and immigration."