A Republican mayor in Florida has made a desperate attempt to distance herself from Donald Trump and the president’s hardline immigration policies.
Christi Fraga was forced to do damage control after business owners in the city of Doral complained to CBS News Miami that masked ICE goons roaming the streets are severely hurting their sales.
The owner of a burger restaurant in the South Florida city–where Trump has a hotel and golf resort located around 80 miles from his Mar-a-Lago home—said customers are becoming too scared to come out because ICE agents carrying out the president’s immigration policies are detaining people.
“It’s affecting us,” said Katia Rios of Pipo Burgers. “Our sales have dropped 70 percent. We spend hours empty.”
In her response, Mayor Fraga tried to detach herself from the Trump administration, saying she sympathizes with those affected by the president’s policies while trying.
“I don’t agree with the way things are handled,” she told CBS. “This is federal law. We cannot impede the federal ICE agents from coming into the cities and doing their enforcement, whether we agree or not.”
Fraga, who is not up for re-election until 2028, also said the city is not notified when ICE agents plan an immigration raid in Doral, while defending her office’s response to the complaints it has received.
“It’s not just emails and letters. There are phone calls being made,” she said. “We are doing what we can to have conversations. I know it’s a very difficult time. I recognize it.”
Fraga is not the only Republican to distance themselves from Trump and his deeply unpopular policies during his second term. With the crucial midterm elections approaching, more lawmakers believe their election chances will improve if they aren’t tied to a president recording near-all-time-low approval ratings.
On Thursday, Miami Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar issued a scathing campaign ad disavowing the 80-year-old president’s immigration policies, saying that Trump had gone “too far” and had “betrayed” Hispanic voters who were so crucial to his 2024 election victory.
“In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record,” Elvira Salazar said. “Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policies.
“You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery, and Reagan was for communism. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”
Even those close to the president are expressing concerns about how damaging ICE’s hardline actions in Miami-Dade, an area of Florida with a high Latino and Hispanic population, could be for the GOP in November.
The county was a Democratic stronghold for decades but voted for Trump in 2024, largely because the president increased his vote share among the key Hispanic bloc.
“I’m getting the Trumpiest Cubans sending me videos from Miami of guys getting busted at places like the gas station, for no apparent reason,” a Trump adviser told Axios.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
