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Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Miami, has used a new campaign advertisement to tell President Trump that his immigration enforcement has overreached — an unusual break with the president from a member of his own party running in a solidly red district he has endorsed her to keep.
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Shop Now“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says in the ad.
She warns that Hispanic voters who backed Trump two years ago have soured on him: “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
Salazar is careful to define the limits of what she is asking for. “I’m not talking about giving them amnesty,” she says.
“I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”
She casts the issue as an opportunity for Trump rather than a rebuke, telling him: “You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism.”
Her record runs in both directions. Salazar has backed the bipartisan DIGNITY Act, which would grant legal status to certain long-term noncitizens, while also supporting the 2023 Secure the Border Act and the 2025 Laken Riley Act.
The ad does not single out particular enforcement operations or policies, and Fox News reported that her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The timing sits against softening numbers for the president. A Fox News poll released Wednesday put Trump’s overall job approval at 39 percent, with 61 percent disapproving. On immigration specifically, 56 percent of voters said they disapproved of his handling of the issue — a better showing than his marks on the economy or foreign policy, but still underwater.
Trump has endorsed Salazar’s bid for reelection, which makes the ad an unusual piece of positioning: a candidate seeking distance on a signature issue from a president whose backing she has and, in a district like hers, still needs.
Salazar has not resigned, withdrawn or left the party, and the ad does not call on Trump to change any specific policy or program by name.
It asks, in general terms, for a different posture — and it does so in the closing weeks of a midterm campaign in which Republicans are defending a narrow House majority.
