By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on June 19, 2025, from Havana
The moment, captured on video, “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” as he was dragged out of the room. Photo: Etienne Laurent, Ap
In a country that prides itself on being “the land of the free,” last week’s scene involving Senator Alex Padilla shook consciences and starkly exposed the deepest contradictions of the US immigration model. In an unusual incident, Padilla—the first Latino to represent California in the US Senate—was subdued, handcuffed, and forced to the ground by security agents after peacefully attempting to ask a question to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference.
The senator sought to question her about the repression exercised during the massive protests in Los Angeles, called to reject the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the anti-immigrant offensive, which ended with hundreds of arrests and replicas of discontent in dozens of U.S. cities.
The moment, captured on video, shows him shouting clearly, “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” as he was dragged out of the room. His intervention was not violent, disruptive, or threatening.
It was, in fact, the last resort of an elected representative who refuses to remain silent while his people—mostly of Mexican and Central American origin—suffer the consequences of an increasingly ruthless policy. Padilla’s gesture contrasts with the silence—and even worse, the complicity—of Cuban-born lawmakers who today hold seats in Washington.
Far from raising their voices for their people or mediating on behalf of those invited by the US government to emigrate under the humanitarian parole mechanism, these congressmen have chosen to align themselves with the harshest, most repressive, and cruelest strategies of Trump’s immigration policy. “What have anti-Cuban politicians done to stop the mass expulsion of Cubans who arrived in the United States with the promise of a new life?” asked Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío recently.
The answer is as simple as it is alarming: nothing. Worse still, they have supported—explicitly or implicitly—the suspension of the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela Parole Program (CHNV), the criminalization of migrants, and the inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a measure that has further hindered family reunification.
The CHNV was a Biden administration initiative, in effect between January 2023 and 2025, that offered a temporary legal pathway of up to two years for citizens of those four countries who were outside the US. It attempted—and partly succeeded—to alleviate pressure on the southern border. President Trump decreed its permanent elimination, leaving more than 530,000 people in an irregular situation and exposed to deportation.
Figures such as María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez have preferred to use their political capital to fuel hate campaigns against the island, promote propaganda crusades against any form of dialogue, and maintain a “hard line” rhetoric that brings them electoral benefits but leaves thousands of their compatriots in the lurch.
As Cubans are detained, expelled, or forced into hiding, their supposed spokespeople remain silent or applaud Trump, more interested in advancing their careers within the power structure than in honoring the mandate of those who elected them. Carlos Giménez, who has insisted on convincing Congress of the existence of Chinese military bases in Cuba to justify a military adventure against the island, has emerged as one of the most fervent defenders of Trump’s hardline immigration policies. He declared in X: “Biden’s failed open-border policy allowed thousands of criminals and gang members to enter our country, leaving us with the task of solving the problem… The Supreme Court’s decision [to eliminate the CHNV program] is the law of the land and we must respect it” (https://acortar.link/b4yiyg).
The difference between Padilla and Cuban-American congressmen is not merely ideological. It is, above all, an ethical difference. Padilla risks his integrity in defense of Latinos, even at the cost of institutional abuse. The others offer contradictory speeches while allowing—or promoting—families to be separated, migrants to be returned without legal guarantees, and the most basic rights to be trampled. (The Mexican-American community in Los Angeles came out to defend their compatriots, while Cuban-Americans in Miami remained silent at home.)
This episode has made it clear that not all Latino representatives exercise their office with the same decorum. Some understand that political power must be used to protect their communities, denounce abuses, and demand justice. Others, however, have betrayed their own people. History will ultimately place everyone in their rightful place, although the facts have already spoken clearly: a Latino senator who dignifies his people, versus a caucus that has opted for silence—or obedience—while Cubans are hunted down in immigration courts and deported, even to destinations as extreme as South Sudan.
Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist who is First Vice President of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and was a founder of Cuba Debate, she is a writer of several books and a regular contributor to La Jornada.
Source: La Jornada translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English