MIAMI — At a rally in Hialeah in 2023, then-candidate Donald Trump made a pledge: to end the “invasion” of the United States by undocumented immigrants. The announcement, made in a city where three-fourths of residents are foreign-born, was greeted with thunderous applause as Trump said his next administration was going to root out undocumented criminals.

But under the current Trump administration, the idea of who is considered a “criminal” has broadened to include all undocumented people. ICE raids and arrests of undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal history, have ignited fear and anger from Hispanic communities across the country, a diverse voting bloc Trump made inroads with in 2024.

In Florida, the governor was quick to assist the president make the leap from “bad hombres” to anyone without papers. In February, at the first meeting of his State Board of Immigration meeting, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “If you are here illegally that is a crime too, OK? You can’t just say you have free range to be here illegally until you commit some type of felony. I want you out before you commit the felony.”

The sweeping characterization of undocumented immigrants as criminals, even those that are trying to follow the rules, is changing attitudes about President Trump’s response to what he once called an “invasion.” In South Florida, large groups of immigrants who had Temporary Protected Status or asylum cases pending saw themselves suddenly categorized as “criminals” after the Trump administration ended their statuses. Recent national polling shows Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration while a local survey shows that some of South Florida’s Venezuelan immigrants are feeling disillusioned. The pendulum swing now even has South Florida Republican elected officials finding themselves in a precarious situation: stay loyal to Trump’s agenda or answer to their immigrant voter base.

“There’s this huge upsurge of sentiment that this is a country of immigrants, that these immigrants are not all bad,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University. “And that even those who are being deported should be treated in a more humane way.”

‘Everyone is basically at risk’

Fort Lauderdale immigration attorney Mark Hamburger told the Miami Herald that under previous presidential administrations there was an understanding that migrants who commit serious crimes should be prioritized for deportation over undocumented people with clean records and families in the country that depend on them. “There is no line anymore. Everyone is basically at risk,” Hamburger said.

“Trump wants to group all immigrants into this category of criminals, but that’s just not true,” he said. “I’m sure they’d love to say, ‘They’re all criminals, they all have records.’ But they don’t even say that anymore. Now, what the press secretary says is, ‘Well, they’re here unlawfully and that in itself is a crime, so we’re detaining anyone who’s here unlawfully.’”

By targeting undocumented people in general, Hamburger said, the Trump administration has overwhelmed the court system and stoked fear, ultimately to push immigrants to self-deport.

One of Hamburger’s clients was a woman from Nicaragua who came to the United States in 2022 seeking political asylum, which her sister and cousin were able to secure. She had been living in Los Angeles, but was feeling paranoid amid the ICE raids and anti-ICE protests.

Hamburger called her before her trial, which was finally set for last month. She was noticeably nervous over the phone and hung up. When he called back, she confessed: “I’m in Honduras right now.”

Though she had a strong political asylum case, Hamburger said, the stress was making her sick. She gave up on her case and left the country.

“I have many other cases like that where people are just slowly putting up the white flag,” Hamburger said. “The chaos, the psychological torture, it reaches a certain point for immigrants where it starts to manifest physically as illness. And some people, ultimately, just give up.”

Americans soften on immigration

As U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Miami pitched the Dignity Act to the American public — and Trump himself — Salazar reiterated a crucial point that undoubtedly resonates with her constituents in Miami: not all undocumented immigrants are criminals.

“Yes, they broke the law, but someone gave them a job because they needed those workers, workers who are still needed today,” she said.

The bill would grant undocumented immigrants living in the country for more than five years with no criminal record a legal status that protects them from deportation. While its passage remains unlikely in a polarized Congress, it marks a notable attempt by Salazar to distance herself from the full scope of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The timing is notable. A growing body of polling shows that the public mood is shifting — and fast.

A July 11 Gallup poll found that Americans are becoming more positive about immigration, reversing four years of rising concern. In June 2024, 55% of respondents wanted immigration reduced. By July 2025, that number dropped to just 30%. Among Hispanic voters, Trump’s approval on immigration now sits at 21%, well below his national average.

A separate CBS News poll found that a majority of Americans believe Trump’s administration is targeting “people who aren’t dangerous criminals” for deportation — and that his second-term policies have gone further than many voters expected.

What’s behind this big change in public opinion?

“A lot of it has to do with overreach,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political commentator and expert on Latino voters. Many are critical of the Trump administration for circumventing due process and sending military vehicles to cities like Los Angeles, Madrid said. Americans have also been inundated with harrowing anecdotes in the news and on social media of undocumented immigrants being detained by ICE and separated from their families, likely adding to the unpopularity of Trump’s policies.

In Miami, ICE agents in plain clothes have arrested immigrants as they walked out of immigration courtrooms. In a New York Times report published in June, a reporter watched as ICE officers in Miami arrested an undocumented man they were looking for, along with his brother who happened to be with him.

“(Trump’s) numbers are still very strong with Republicans. I think the vast majority of Republicans did vote for this and like it, and frankly, think he probably could still be more aggressive,” Madrid said. “But the voters that he needs to get to a majority — young voters, Hispanic voters, independents — they have fled in pretty historic numbers. The collapse is pretty spectacular, especially given a very short time frame.”

Immigration attorneys across the country are hustling to help clients who have been swept up in the crackdown despite having no criminal history. Hamburger said most of his clients either have no criminal history or have been charged with misdemeanors, the most common being driving without a license. Two clients of his were arrested while fishing without a license, he said. Now, they’re in Alligator Alcatraz, the state-run immigration detention facility built in the Everglades where detainees reportedly face harsh and disgusting conditions.

Hundreds of detainees who earlier this month were held in Alligator Alcatraz or scheduled to be sent there had no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States, the Herald reported this month.

‘They didn’t vote for this’

Salazar, who represents a diverse swath of Miami-Dade County with large populations of Cubans, Haitians, Caribbeans, Colombians and Venezuelans, is “in a bind,” said Gamarra, the FIU professor. While Gamarra said the Dignity Act bill is unlikely to pass, “it helps her public stance.”

Salazar will have to answer to that large constituency in the midterms, though Gamara said it’s too early to tell exactly how Latino voters in Miami will respond to South Florida Republicans.

But there are some notable trends emerging. An FIU survey Gamarra conducted in May among Venezuelans in Florida showed real disillusionment among a third of Trump voters with his administration’s immigration policy, particularly the ending of Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole.

“I can tell you from looking at the Venezuelan data that there is a degree of sentiment, very deeply held sentiment, that they were betrayed, that they didn’t vote for this,” Gamarra said. “They thought it was going to only be criminals because they made that distinction that ‘we’re not criminals.’ But they didn’t anticipate the broader definition of ‘criminal’ behavior that the administration has adopted.”

In the meantime, Madrid said he has noticed “fascinating” shifts occurring in different Latino communities in response to Trump’s policies.

For the first time in his career, Madrid said he is seeing the Cuban American community respond to this moment the same way the Mexican American community is, despite their very different histories in the United States and typical political beliefs. He recalled attending a recent press conference where Cuban and Venezuelan community leaders called on FIFA to protect attendees from ICE the way the Dodgers’ did in Los Angeles.

“That same fear, that same terror, is not something we normally see from the Cuban American community with a Republican president!” he said. “We’ve never seen that before.”

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