He Voted for Trump to Deport Criminals. Then His Cousin Was Deported.

Grace Calero, a 39-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant, was driving to work in Kissimmee, Florida, with Juliana, her 19-year-old daughter, when another car hit them. An ambulance carried them to the hospital for treatment. Then immigration agents walked into the hospital room and arrested them.

A relative filmed it on a phone. The video shows officers pulling Calero away from her daughter. Similar arrests have occurred near schools, bus stops, sports venues, and even inside courthouses where immigration cases are heard.

In Miami, the effort to fight those arrests has left Florida immigration attorneys swamped with clients. Business is booming for Ismael Labrador, a Cuban-born immigration lawyer, but he wishes it were not. As Labrador puts it, "if you don't have a green card in the United States, you may be a target."

Labrador has seen it among friends and relatives in his own community in Florida. He says relatives are now living in fear, and some have already been sent back.

That loss has changed how Labrador talks about his vote. He was among the 68% of Cubans in Florida who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, a bloc that helped Trump win the state with ease. Labrador said he wanted a safe America and believed the promise of mass deportation meant criminals would be removed.

Asked if that belief was naive, Labrador said he felt blindsided by the administration. He now describes himself as a repentant Trump voter. He said, "this wasn't what I voted for."

He is not alone. Last year, Trump revoked temporary humanitarian parole for about 300,000 Cubans, a legal status that had let them live and work in the United States. Cubans in Florida, once regarded as enjoying more protection than any other immigrant group, have discovered they are now as vulnerable to deportation as anyone else.

The shift is rattling Republican politics before next week's midterm elections. Maria Elvira Salazar, the Cuban-American congresswoman who represents Florida's 27th district and is closely associated with Trump on immigration, recorded a video near the White House where she said, "some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far." Her Democratic challenger is Elliot Rodriguez, a former television anchor with CBS News and a familiar face to Cuban-American voters, who has made Miami's expensive daily life and opposition to the deportation policy central to his campaign.

Labrador could not stop authorities from sending his cousin to Cuba.