Latin America in the Campaign

Not long ago, the State Department said Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans was irrelevant because they were not being deported anyway. That is simply a lie. Now Democrats in Florida are taking this issue into the campaign season. That's a smart political move.

As Republicans met Thursday in the state where President Donald Trump finds his strongest Hispanic support, Democrats jeered his administration's detentions and deportations of migrants who've fled Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. 

"We need a good immigration policy. We need to stop these deportations. People are being deported who have a right to be here under the law," Rep. Donna Shalala, D-Fla., said Thursday, adding: "They need more judges. They need more lawyers. People who are being deported, many of them don't have lawyers."

A lot of people are being deported, with thousands more in the backlog.

So far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, 2,060 Cubans have been ordered deported, as well as 1,031 Nicaraguans and 599 Venezuelans.

This is where support for Trump gets weird. He gets credit from conservative Latinos for his hardline stance against the three countries, but the actual policies he chooses have an entirely negative impact on the people on those countries. More specifically, he does what he can to strangle economies and then run away from the responsibility of helping the people fleeing the strangle.

Conservative Latinos may like his anti-socialist rhetoric and conservative social stances, but it makes sense for Democrats to remind voters constantly of the human cost of the administration's Latin America policies. As is often the case, demography will matter. Younger Cubans don't have the same views as their older counterparts, for example.

Democratic candidates, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, have been vocal in opposition of the Maduro government but more receptive of Venezuelan refugees. That's a message they need to repeat. I don't hear them talk so much--if at all--about Cuba, where Trump is even limiting remittances. They need to do so, and to highlight when the administration just lies about the effects of its policies.