Ileana Garcia, a Florida Republican state senator, believes the Trump administration has gone too far with its immigration policy.
Garcia, a co-founder of “Latinas for Trump,” once supported the president’s immigration policies, notably when he was attempting to “build the wall” and close the U.S.-Mexico border.
But now, in an interview with the New York Times published Tuesday, she is warning that his administration’s harsh immigration tactics will cost the GOP come the midterm elections later this year.
“It’s gone too far. What happened Saturday was abhorrent,” she said in reference to a Border Patrol agent fatally shooting 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Garcia placed most of the blame on Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, who is seen as the brains behind much of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“I do think that [Trump] will lose the midterms because of Stephen Miller,” she said.
Garcia told the Times that she knew Miller during Trump’s first term in office, when she worked in the Department of Homeland Security’s public affairs office. She said she was no fan of his back then either, but noted that he had less power in the White House.
“I’m not absolving him,” Garcia said of Trump. “I’m not justifying the things that we’re seeing.”
“Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets,” she said, noting “there’s no perfect administration.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
Miller has described Pretti as “a would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.”
His comments have been the ire of President Trump himself, who has been unhappy with the way his administration has handled its second immigration agent involved fatal shooting in Minneapolis. Miller was reportedly shut out of a closed-door meeting at the White House on Monday as the administration tries to shift its immigration strategy in Minnesota.
Garcia, a Cuban American, said she believes others in the GOP feel the same way as her regarding Trump’s immigration policies, but are too scared to voice their thoughts. It is Republicans’ self-censorship, she told the Times, that scares her more.
“It’s almost like the stories that my mother would tell me of what she lived in Cuba, and we’re seeing it here,” she said.
Katie Miller, Stephen Miller’s podcasting wife, responded to the Times article on X, claiming Garcia “was fired from DHS in Trump’s first term because she failed to show up to work.”
Garcia left the first Trump administration in 2019 to work on “Latinas for Trump” to support Trump’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in 2020.
She was elected to the Florida state Senate in 2020. While in the Florida legislature, she introduced a bill to allow the state to hand out up to $5 million in taxpayer funds to help Trump pay for his legal bills. The bill was nixed after Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would veto it.
