Mayor Suarez surveys southern border, huddles with Fox radio host, trumpets Miami
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez took an unexpected trip to Texas this week to visit the U.S. border with Mexico as part of a delegation put together by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a libertarian conservative nonprofit founded by brothers Charles Koch and the late David Koch. The group also included Fox News radio host Guy Benson and social media influencer Caitlin Oponski, who goes by “Cowgirl Cait.”
Such trips have become a staple for Republican presidential hopefuls this election cycle as they seek to capitalize on polls showing the majority of Americans across both parties see the number of migrants crossing the border as a major problem facing the country. But Suarez’s recent visit seemed to come out of the blue, and had no obvious ties to a particular political campaign.
Prior to his short-lived bid for president last year, Suarez suggested he would be interested in vice president or governor. Since dropping out of the presidential primary last August, however, Suarez has not announced any plans to run for any higher office after he leaves his mayoral post in two years due to term-limitations.
Suarez’s three-day trip to Texas came amid deepening political problems in City Hall, where he and half of recent commissioners are facing corruption allegations, including one commissioner removed from office last fall following an arrest on bribery charges and another who faces a $63.5 million verdict after a jury determined he misused his public office. Suarez is under FBI investigation over payments he took from a developer seeking permitting help from the mayor’s office.
The mayor traveled to Texas with his taxpayer-funded city police security detail, according to the mayor’s office. While Americans for Prosperity covered Suarez’s travel expenses, the mayor did not respond to questions about whether that included plane tickets and hotels for the security detail as well.
The police department has not yet provided records that would detail the cost to taxpayers. Americans for Prosperity did not respond to the Herald’s questions about the trip.
The mayor’s communications director, Stephanie Severino, said Suarez traveled to the border so he could “witness the border crisis firsthand” and to speak about Miami, which she described as a “city where immigrants have thrived.”
A little more than one in every two Miami residents is a first-generation immigrant, according to the U.S. Census. Like so many in South Florida, Suarez’s father emigrated from Cuba in the 1960s as a young boy. Xavier Suarez later became Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor.
“Illegal immigration has become a top concern for most Americans,” Severino said. “Republican and Democratic mayors all across our country have been critical of the Biden administration’s policies, which provoked and have sustained this crisis.”
While the recent influx of migrants across the southern border has put a severe strain on resources in other cities, Miami has not experienced the same struggles, according to Malena Legarre, executive director of Hermanos de la Calle, which provides emergency services to recently arrived migrants in Miami.
Data provided weekly by the Department of Homeland Security show the number of migrants crossing the border who planned to come to South Florida has doubled since summer 2023, from about 1,100 to 2,200 each week. More are from Cuba than from any other nation, data show. But most are not ending up homeless, Legarre said.
“Lots of Cubans are coming, but they have support. They have family here,” Legarre said.
While Miami shelters are overcrowded, Legarre said most people experiencing homelessness in Miami are not recently arrived migrants but residents feeling the squeeze of the city’s skyrocketing rent prices and stagnant wages.
Hermanos de la Calle received federal funds to provide up to a 30-day hotel stay for newly arrived migrants. Most of those who use the program are Venezuelans who do not have the same family support, Legarre said. But, she said, most months, the program is far below capacity.
During his comments from the border, Suarez said his city would welcome more immigrant workers to help make up for a labor shortage, which he said was the result of the city’s record-low unemployment rate. Suarez said he supported reforms that would “right size” legal migration, but did not provide specifics of what those reforms would look like.
Most migrants crossing the southern border cannot get a work permit while they wait for their asylum claims to move through the court system. Suarez did not say whether he would support reforms that would fast-track work authorization for asylum-seekers.
On Wednesday, the New York Times and other outlets reported Joe Biden is considering an executive order that would prevent anyone who illegally crossed the border from seeking asylum. The move would undermine the longstanding practice of allowing anyone to sets foot in the United States to ask for political refuge.
Under current policy, migrants from certain countries who cross the border and turn themselves over to immigration authorities are eligible for parole into the country as they apply for asylum.
During his appearance on the Guy Benson Show, which went live from the border, Suarez drew a distinction between his father, who he said emigrated from Cuba legally, and those he says are crossing the southern border today. Suarez’s father, Xavier, authored a book in which he described how his family came to the United States after his father was detained by the Castro regime.
Xavier Suarez, who became Miami’s first Cuban-American mayor, wrote that the family ultimately left Cuba due to a combination of poor job prospects and fear of political persecution — foreshadowing reasons given by thousands of asylum-seekers now being paroled into the country each week from the southern border.
Xavier Suarez’s book describing how his family came to the United States was not self published, as stated in an earlier version of this story.
Miami Herald staff writer Joey Flechas contributed to this report.
