Alex 🇺🇸🥂

I know the politics of @MaElviraSalazar’s district pretty well. It’s where I was born and raised. There’s a lot happening here that people outside Miami don’t seem to understand. Let me unpack it for you. 1) Maria Elvira (as she’s known locally) isn’t some generic Republican politician. She’s been a major presence in South Florida for more than 20 years. She has a level of local credibility that’s difficult to understand if you only know her from national politics. Her voters know her well, and that gives her room to speak her mind. 2) A lot of this comes down to a basic problem of definitions. When people in Miami hear “illegal immigrant,” they tend to picture someone who crossed the border illegally while trying to evade immigration authorities. By and large, that’s not who Maria is talking about. Many of the people caught up in immigration enforcement proceedings in Miami entered the United States LEGALLY and are getting lumped in with people who entered unlawfully. Immigrant communities understand these distinctions. 3) The media environment for Republicans in heavily Hispanic areas is absolutely brutal right now. Spanish-language television has spent the past year and a half airing story after story about sympathetic families facing detention or deportation. You can argue about the framing, but politically, those images are incredibly powerful.