When Solidarity Stops at Citizenship

Eduardo A Gamarra

A couple of years ago, during a lunch with a visiting Argentine dignitary, a former Miami mayor told our guest that the Biden administration had brought large numbers of migrants into the United States and bused them to New York and elsewhere to vote in elections. I challenged the claim, but without success.

The exchange stayed with me because of the authority behind the assertion. A visiting Latin American official was hearing an account of American democracy from someone who had held prominent public office here. His position could give a partisan allegation the credibility of firsthand knowledge.

Migrants were indeed transported to New York. Among the most prominent transportation efforts was the program Texas Governor Greg Abbott publicly announced in August 2022. New York’s contemporaneous records also identified buses organized by the city of El Paso. Those facts establish transportation programs; they do not establish a Biden administration conspiracy to import voters.   

Nor does arriving in New York confer voting rights. Federal law generally prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. New York City’s attempt to enfranchise certain noncitizens in municipal elections was never implemented and was struck down in 2025. The claim that migrants were transported to cast ballots requires evidence that the buses' existence does not provide.    

This episode illustrates a larger concern about Latinos and American democracy. Three forces can reinforce one another: solidarity with newcomers becomes conditional, degrading enforcement becomes easier to accept, and vulnerable immigrants lose trust in compatriots whose citizenship gives them greater security. Political misinformation helps connect these forces by turning people seeking refuge into threats.

The first force is the narrowing of empathy.

Shared experiences of migration do not guarantee solidarity. Álvaro José Corral discusses “selective dissociation,” drawing on Lisa García Bedolla’s work: some Latinos distance themselves from immigrants whose stigmatized position they do not want to share. Cultural identification can coexist with support for exclusion.  

Cuban Miami makes this tension especially visible. Its institutions and networks helped generations establish themselves in the United States. Yet we should resist romanticizing an earlier era of universal welcome. Susan Eckstein documented divisions between earlier Cuban exiles and later arrivals long before Trump’s political ascendancy. Different experiences of the revolution, class backgrounds, and relationships with relatives on the island produced conflicting understandings of exile and belonging.

The concern today is that the enclave’s promise of refuge is increasingly subjected to a political test. Its businesses and cultural institutions can remain intact while its willingness to defend newcomers weakens.

In conversations with Cuban and Venezuelan Republican leaders in Miami, I have heard compatriots dismissed as socialists because of political disagreements. On local radio, I have heard newcomers discussed through accusations involving socialism, hostility to religion, and presumed loyalty to Democrats. I also recall hearing Republican spokesperson Jaime Flórez on Actualidad Radio advance the claim that Biden’s immigration policies were intended to manipulate elections.

These are my observations, not a survey of either community. Flórez’s public positions also include criticism of enforcement tactics: Actualidad Radio reported his objections to raids targeting workers and outside courthouses in July 2025. That qualification matters. Support for restrictions does not establish approval of every enforcement practice.  

What concerns me is the political test itself. A newcomer’s experience of displacement becomes less important than whether that person endorses the politics expected of an exile.

I see the same tendency in Venezuelan MAGA leaders labeling compatriots who protest ICE raids in Doral as socialists. In the rhetoric I am describing, an objection to enforcement becomes evidence of ideological disloyalty. The discussion shifts away from whether arrests are justified or families are treated fairly and toward the supposed political character of those asking.

Even if a protester holds socialist views, that does not diminish the person’s entitlement to humane treatment or the legitimacy of peaceful dissent. Solidarity that depends on ideological agreement is a fragile foundation for democracy.

The second force is the acceptance of cruelty as an instrument of enforcement.

The evidence from immigration detention makes this concern concrete. Amnesty International’s December 2025 investigation reported unsanitary conditions, inadequate medical care, prolonged shackling, and punitive outdoor confinement at Alligator Alcatraz. The organization concluded that some reported treatment amounted to torture.  

Subsequent government oversight supplied additional evidence. A September 2026 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general documented failures involving medical care, sanitation, food service, recreation, and other standards. It also documented confinement in small metal enclosures and found the practice inconsistent with humane treatment. The facility had closed in June. DHS and Florida officials defended its compliance and disputed allegations of inhumane conditions.  

These concerns extend beyond one facility. A joint investigation by Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South documented overcrowding, medical neglect, and degrading treatment at Krome, Broward Transitional Center, and Miami’s Federal Detention Center. Private contractors operated or provided services at Krome and Broward; Alligator Alcatraz was state-run. Accountability must reach both public authorities and the companies they employ.  

The democratic test is whether citizens demand accountability when these conditions become known. Supporting immigration enforcement does not require accepting humiliation, medical neglect, or punishment without justification.

Nor should we presume that Latino citizens generally accept such treatment. Pew’s October 2025 survey found that 65 percent of Latino adults disapproved of the administration’s immigration approach and 71 percent believed its deportation efforts went too far. Even among Latino Republicans, 47 percent said the administration was doing too much on deportations. Solidarity remains substantial; the community is divided.  

The third force is the distrust that arises from that division.

In my conversations with Cuban and Venezuelan Republican leaders, I have heard people whose Temporary Protected Status or humanitarian parole has ended described as criminals if they remain in the country, and therefore deserving of mass deportation.

This reasoning collapses distinct questions. Has a particular person’s protection actually ended? Does that person have another basis to remain? Is the person subject to removal? Has the person committed a crime?

The answers are not interchangeable. Losing protection can expose someone to removal, depending on individual circumstances. But being removable does not automatically make continued presence a crime. The Supreme Court recognized that general distinction in Arizona v. United States.  

Temporary protection does not promise permanent residence. Its termination, however, does not erase a person’s earlier authorization to remain, establish criminal guilt, or justify degrading treatment. When these distinctions disappear, a government decision becomes a judgment about the character of the people affected.

Among vulnerable immigrants I speak with, including people who have lost TPS or humanitarian parole, a bitter perception recurs: a Latino immigrant’s worst enemy may be another Latino who already possesses U.S. citizenship.

I would not adopt that formulation as a general truth. I take it seriously as an expression of betrayal. People who expected recognition from others with similar histories instead encounter demands to leave and accusations that their objections reveal criminality or socialism.

The consequences can reach beyond immigration politics. Research by Vanessa Cruz Nichols, Alana LeBrón, and Francisco Pedraza found that more intensive immigration policing was associated with lower Latino trust in government as a source of health information. Encounters with enforcement can shape judgments about institutions serving entirely different purposes.  

My concern is that conditional empathy makes mistreatment easier to excuse, while mistreatment and abandonment deepen distrust. That distrust can weaken the relationships through which communities organize, seek help, and participate in public life.

Latinos have every right to disagree about immigration, religion, economic policy, and political parties. Democratic solidarity requires defending basic rights through those disagreements.

For communities shaped by exile, opposition to authoritarianism abroad carries an obligation at home: to accept dissent, insist on evidence, and defend humane treatment even for people whose politics we dislike. Citizenship should strengthen our capacity to meet that obligation. It should not mark the point at which we cease to recognize ourselves in those who arrived after us.