“¡Cobarde! ¡Mudo!”
Coward! Voiceless! These are the names the narrator calls Congressman Carlos Gimenez in a video released Thursday that shames the former Miami-Dade mayor for his silence and complicity on Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including the rollback of protected status for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, many of whom live in his community.
“Where is Carlos Gimenez hiding? Trump is stripping 500,000 cubanos, nicaraguenses y venezolanos of legal status, sending them back to hell,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot, which is viewable on YouTube.
“Nuestros compatriotas are stranded in tyranny and dictatorship and this monster is killing millions that fund charities and people that would have helped them,” the narrator says, in very cubanaso language, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development. “He even blew up Radio and TV Marti.”
Read related: Downtown Miami protest planned Saturday vs Donald Trump policies
Ladra can’t help but wonder if Gimenez and the other Cuban-American legislators are proud that Trump was able to do something that Fidel Castro tried desperately for decades to do but could not — end Radio and TV Marti.
“And all this time Carlos Gimenez has stayed silent. Coward! Mute! Betraying us all,” the man in the video says.
Well, not entirely silent. Gimenez was on WPLG Local 10’s This Week in South Florida last month and admitted to Glenna Milberg that he was not “entirely sure” what Trump’s cuts mean for TV Marti and Radio Marti. While Democrat Congresswoman and non-Cuban Debbie Wasserman-Schultz blasted the end of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Gimenez seemed to stand by 
Trump’s decision, while still promising to do something — in the future.
“I think it has to be evaluated and each agency head is going to do that. The people may be placed on administrative leave for a while, but you can be certain the the three republican members from South Florida will be fighting to maintain effective broadcasting to Cuba,” Gimenez said on the popular Sunday morning show. “There may have been some doubts about the effectiveness of TV Martí and Radio Martí recently during the Biden administration. We want to make sure that if it is reconstituted and it continues, that it’s effective.”
What? So Biden is being criticized now for the way the OCB communicated during the last four years? Can you imagine what would happen if Biden or another Democrat had called for the end of Radio and TV Martí? Protests that paralyze the expressways and shouts of “¡Communista!” on Cuban radio. That’s what would happen.
The video ends with a call to action and the display of the congressman’s district office phone number. “Call Carlos Gimenez and tell him to man up to Trump.”
That number, by the way, is 305-222-0160.
The ad is sponsored by Keep Them Honest, Inc., a group that has formed to call out these liars and hypocrites. There is no political action committee or information on the Florida Division of Corporations website. And their address in Kendall is of a shared workspace office. This is their first video.
Cubanos Con Biden co-founder Chris Wills, who also worked with former Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey in his congressional campaign last year, told Political Cortadito there would be more.
“As somebody who was born and raised in South Florida, the son of a Cuban exile mom and a Venezuelan exile dad, I’m hearing from my own family, my neighbors, my friends that not only is there an incredible amount of fear over this mass deportation and taking away of legal status from those who have fled dictatorships, but increasingly there is a lot more disappointment and feeling of betrayal from Carlos Gimenez,” Wills said.
He said Gimenez and his counterparts on the Miami-Dade delegation have the power, because they represent three Republican votes, to force the administration to change its position on temporary protected status, which was revoked last month for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
“If the three of them would unite and hold their votes, it would stop the Trump agenda in its tracks, until he resolves TPS,” Wills told Ladra.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
Gimenez and Congress Members Mario Diaz-Balart and Maria Elvira Salazar, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a true hypocrite who has gone against everything he used to stand for, were also targets of a billboard off the Palmetto Expressway — right smack between Hialeah and Doral — paid for by the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus calling them traitors to the community and the American Dream.
While Congresswoman Frederica Wilson and Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava demand tours of the Krome Detention Center, where there are reports of overcrowded chaos and unsafe and unsanitary conditions, these Cuban-American politicians — who pander to the Venezuelan and Colombian vote, also — have not. Emails to his spokesman, Roberto Lugones, have gone unanswered. Constituent Services Director Beatriz Viera, reached at the congressional district office Friday morning, said she did not know anything about a tour but assured Ladra that Gimenez was “working very closely with the administration.”
So, then, he’s not just silent. Gimenez is complicit.
Viera, who was only in the office to receive the submissions for a congressional art contest, downplayed any criticism, saying that there were many people who supported how Gimenez was handling the current administration.
“That sign is irrelevant,” she said about the billboard. “That’s the party that’s against him.”
Wills said that Gimenez an the others “have refused to actually take any meaningful action to help those immigrants and families who are living with monumental fear.” He added that business owners are also feeling the pinch as fewer people fill restaurants and retail stores, staying home instead to avoid the authorities. He’s also noticed an increase in police presence, even before Doral and Homestead became the latest cities in Miami-Dade to sign 287g agreements with the federal government to help the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department in the identification and detention of illegal immigrants (more on that later).
Read related: Maria Elvira Salazar takes credit for judge extending TPS for Venezuelans
“This is not the America that Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart were brought to or raised in, to believe that we all should be hopeful of achieving the American Dream,” Wills said. “We have an immigrant community that is living the American nightmare.”
Where is Carlos Gimenez hiding? Behind a bill he has proposed to create a federal task force to focus on security for the upcoming 
major intentional events coming to the U.S. over the next four years — including the FIFA World Cup, some of which will be played in South Florida, America’s 250th birthday celebrations next year, and the 2028 Olympics. He’s hiding behind a call to end travel and remittances to Cuban families on the island prison from Cuban families in the U.S. (mostly in Miami). He’s hiding behind a petition to the Department of Homeland Security to deport Cuban nationals he believes to be regime agents. While Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen visits the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, to make sure that Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a man married to a U.S. citizen with U.S.-born children who the Trump administration admits was deported in error and ordered returned by a federal judge — hasn’t yet been killed, Gimenez is hiding in Guantanamo on a trip to check out the concentration camps where Trump had planned to send illegal immigrants.
He couldn’t help but take a selfie, ’cause he was in Cuba for the first time in 64 years.
Gimenez is just too busy to stand up for his community, right?
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He needs to get his MF teeth fixed…he already collecting what like 3 pensions? Come on homie shell out some money and fix that grill.
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Ed Vidal – another Fox News / or choice right wing media as your only source meaning you need Civics 101.
No, your comment is not true. Your comment is your common default blame game – spin the wheel and say a Democrat’s name.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS)** was “not invented” by the Obama-Biden administration or any administration after that. It was created by Congress through a law called the Immigration Act of 1990, signed by President George H. W. Bush, a Republican president. So it is a statutory program—not just an executive action—and has a clear legal basis in federal law (specifically, **8 U.S.C. § 1254a**).
TPS gives the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to grant temporary immigration protection to individuals from countries experiencing:
– Ongoing armed conflict (like war),
– Environmental disasters (like earthquakes or hurricanes), or
– Other extraordinary and temporary conditions.
While discretion*is involved in deciding which countries qualify and when to designate or extend TPS the legal authority for the program is grounded in U.S. law, not something invented or improvised by any one administration.
The hypocrisy displayed by these Representatives and our Secretary of State is incredible. Their true, self-servant character is revealed by their silence.
WOW ! He has Not come out and Said Anything , But Who came out is COMPAÑERA Daniela and Federika The BLM & LBGTQ Saviors in Our County . Lots of Noice for Nothing ,Just Cool Down and Wait if You Don’t Have Dirt in Your Bag You will be OK ! All they are sending Back is TRASH ?
I’m with Hercules. I couldn’t have said it better myself. His comment is everything. I find myself enjoying the negative effects of Trump’s policies on those who voted for him. You got the man you wanted, folks, so suck it up. “Deplorable” was absolutely the best adjective for Trump, his cronies, and his voters.
TPS=Temporary Protected Status was invented at the discretion of the Obama-Biden 3.0 administration. There is no other legal basis for it than such discretion
That administration was rejected in the election last year, and Trump was decisively elected on the pledge to expel illegal aliens, especially those admitted by Obama-Biden.
Accordingly, it should surprise no one that Trump has revoked that discretion and implemented his policy of deportation. Anyone offended should show their disgust by leaving America!
Carlos Gimenez is a coward.
Another wonderful, on par move for Gimenez. Remember the library debacle of 2013. After the major fuckup trying to kill the 50-branch county libraries, he got elected to Congreve.
Around that same time Miami-Dade’s holiday weekends saw our streets taken over by ATVs and motorbikes dangerously and illegally driven en-mass, across Miami-Dade. Gimenez, ex-first responding fireman, did nothing. Said nothing. Let ‘em ride for years without a peep from his office. Only after he ascended to a federal office, did officials from our county speak about how they were going to work with police agencies to deal with this hazard. And yet, he’s the Cuban golden boy who’s never lost an election. LOL that he knifed his peeps in their backs.
Amen Hercules. You pretty much said it all in simple words for everyone to understand what those who voted for the president realize this big lie
Hopefully everyone from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia and elsewhere who voted for Trump are suffering. How could anyone ever be so stupid to actually believe Trump had their backs or cared about their issues. Never has; never will. But stupid is as stupid does, and all the “Deplorables” (Hillary was right to call them that) who voted for him can now suffer his presidency redux along with the rest of us.
Sadly, though, this video, the billboard and all the screaming and yelling against Trump’s immigration policies by those who supported him (including Mike Fernandez) is only occurring because of a single issue. These Trump supporters are not having second thoughts because of how Trump is harming the world, our country and our and our children’s futures. They’re only concerned about getting more of their kind here and then keeping them here. They’re not phased by Trump blowing up our democracy, turning on allies, rejecting NATO, threatening Canada and Greenland/Denmark, browbeating Ukraine, giving the Russians and their tyrant Putin a collective wet sloppy blowjob, destroying our constitutional and financial order, ignoring and enabling Israel’s decimation of Gaza and the West Bank and otherwise behaving like a Class-A dickhead.
Trump is, has always been, and will always be a monster (remember the Central Park 5?), and his policies enable the worst in people: South Florida’s congressional Republicans and weak li’l Marco Rubio turn on their own; Elon Musk and his lackeys destroy essential government services Trump’s own voters depend on; dictators in El Salvador, Hungary, Turkey and elsewhere cause global disarray. He is turning our shining “City on a Hill,” our exceptional America into one of the slums his dad ran back in the day.
The man bankrupted a casino and now may bankrupt a nation. As his economic policies ruin our government’s credit rating, creditors like China will demand higher interest rates to purchase U.S. government debt, so a greater amount of our GDP will be needed to pay that interest. Bond markets don’t care who is president. Congratulations Deplorables, you have given this man a platform to potentially cause the greatest bankruptcy in the history of the world. Argentina was nothing by comparison. If this continues, the U.S. Dollar will be worth less than a tube of toothpaste to a trailer park full of Trump voters, and we’ll all have to start learning Mandarin.
There is nothing “great” about him; there never has been anything “great” about him; there never will be anything “great” about him. And he and his lackeys blaming Biden is the equivalent of Fidel blaming Batista for his revolution not panning out.
Enjoy the ride, douchebags, and take these worthless congresspeople with you straight to Hell…I mean Mar-a-Lago. While there, you can all get in line to take turns fellating your human equivalent of the golden calf, your only god Trump.