Division over immigration
But recent polls show that one element of the Republican Party’s platform is causing concern among Cuban Americans.
President Trump has supported mass deportations of immigrants with irregular status. This includes the deportation of Cubans who have lived in Cuba for decades.
But Cuba has largely rejected U.S. deportation flights. As a result, Cuban deportees are often sent to third countries with which they have no ties.
Human Rights Watch estimates that the United States forcibly returned 4,353 Cubans to Mexico between January 2025 and March 2026, the most of any non-Mexican national.
That policy clashes with the wishes of South Florida’s Cuban-American community, according to an April Miami Herald poll.
Approximately 68 percent oppose deporting Cubans. An even higher proportion support reopening immigration procedures for Cubans already in the country.
Porras’ Democratic opponent, Lacey “Ray” Sordo, is campaigning on that idea. The 27-year-old Miami native, also the son of Cuban immigrants, opposes heavy-handed enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies.
“ICE has a duty to respect citizens and non-citizens and treat them with dignity,” Sordo told Al Jazeera.
Sordo, who is running unopposed in August’s Democratic primary, shares the view that the island’s current government is “an oppressive and destructive regime that led to Cuba’s collapse.”
Still, he said he wanted to focus on domestic issues, such as President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
“Everyone is living in fear right now: fear of young people not being able to leave their homes, fear of not being able to afford to live here in Miami, fear of being deported,” Sordo said.
Stephanie Best, a volunteer with the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, believes President Trump’s immigration policies could ultimately disillusion Cuban Americans with the right.
“I think a lot of people are starting to realize that they’ve been fooled,” Best said. “They thought they weren’t going to be detained. They were being detained. They thought they weren’t going to be deported. They were being deported.”
Research also suggests a growing generational gap among Cuban Americans.
While the majority of Cuban Americans of all ages identify as Republicans, younger voters between the ages of 18 and 39 are more likely to identify as Democrats or independents.
Sordo sees these trends as evidence that Cuban-American voters are “tired of partisan tribalism.” South Florida’s Latino electorate may be strong, but many voters still feel disenfranchised, Soldo explained.
“We are generally left out of the conversation, whether it’s by our own people who go to work and climb the ladder, or by people who don’t look like us and who have often oppressed people who look like us,” Sordo said.
