A Community Divided From Washington: What the Miami Herald Poll Found
A sweeping new poll commissioned by the Miami Herald and released Thursday has captured the depth of frustration among Cubans and Cuban Americans living in South Florida over the Trump administration's immigration and Cuba policies — while simultaneously revealing a community that overwhelmingly supports aggressive action to topple the Cuban regime.
The survey, conducted among 800 randomly selected respondents spanning Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe counties, offers one of the most detailed snapshots yet of Cuban diaspora opinion at a moment of acute tension between Washington and Havana. Roughly three-quarters of those surveyed were born in Cuba, giving particular weight to their responses about conditions on the island.
Key Numbers at a Glance
The headline findings are striking in their clarity. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they strongly or somewhat disapprove of the Trump administration's push to deport undocumented Cuban nationals who have no criminal records. Only 28 percent expressed approval. On the question of legal immigration, 81 percent said the administration should allow Cubans to enter the United States through legal channels. And when asked about military intervention in Cuba, 79 percent said they support some form of action — ranging from toppling the current regime outright to addressing the island's worsening humanitarian crisis.
Taken together, the results paint a picture of a community that has not simply aligned itself with Republican immigration orthodoxy, even as South Florida Cubans have historically leaned Republican at the ballot box.
Deportations Draw Sharp Disapproval
The poll's findings on deportations are particularly significant given the Trump administration's aggressive posture on immigration since the start of its second term. In January, the administration revoked legal protected status that had shielded many Cubans in the United States from deportation. It also announced it was pausing the processing of immigration visas from Cuba and more than 70 other countries, and signaled plans to wind down parole programs that had allowed some individuals to live and work in the United States for up to two years on humanitarian or public benefit grounds.
For many in South Florida's Cuban community, those moves struck a nerve. The Cuban diaspora has long occupied a complicated position in American immigration debates — seen by many conservatives as a model immigrant community that arrived fleeing communism and built economic success in cities like Miami. The idea that Cubans without criminal records could be deported back to the island, particularly at a time of severe humanitarian crisis there, has generated significant backlash.
The Human Stakes on the Island
The timing of the poll adds urgency to the numbers. Cuba has plunged into one of the deepest economic and energy crises in recent memory. An oil embargo put in place by the Trump administration in January, following U.S. military operations in Venezuela, has further strained an already crippled economy. Last month, the island's entire electrical grid collapsed, leaving nearly 11 million people without power for more than a day. Cubans are also contending with severe shortages of food, water, and medication.
For the roughly three-quarters of survey respondents who were born on the island, these are not abstract policy questions. They have family members living through those conditions. According to the poll, the majority of respondents confirmed they have relatives still in Cuba — a fact that lends an intensely personal dimension to their views on both deportations and intervention.
An analysis by the Cato Institute found that nearly one million applications from Cuban migrants have been affected by a federal benefits freeze, including approximately 36,000 applicants seeking naturalization. That figure underscores how broadly the administration's immigration actions have reverberated through the Cuban American community, well beyond those facing immediate deportation.
Overwhelming Support for Military Intervention — But With Conditions
If the deportation numbers represent a rebuke of the Trump administration from within its own traditional base, the findings on military intervention tell a different story. The 79 percent who said they support some form of military action in Cuba represent a striking consensus — though the poll reveals meaningful distinctions within that majority.
Some respondents said their priority was regime change, while others focused on addressing the humanitarian emergency. But one finding was nearly as clear-cut as the intervention number itself: 78 percent of respondents said they would not accept a deal in which the current Cuban government remained in power in exchange for economic reforms. The community's rejection of a negotiated settlement that leaves the Castro-era political structure intact reflects decades of accumulated distrust toward any arrangement resembling the Obama-era normalization approach.
"Unless the Regime Is Out, We Don't Want In"
Community voices quoted in coverage of the poll made that sentiment explicit. One Cuban American interviewed by CBS Miami said that addressing humanitarian needs must be secondary to achieving political change, arguing that economic relief would only "fuel the government further" without producing freedom for ordinary Cubans. Another respondent was blunt: he wanted "everything out," rejecting any partial deal.
The strong appetite for intervention comes even as many Americans elsewhere in the country are questioning U.S. military involvement abroad. A separate CBS News poll found that few Americans believe U.S. goals are being met in ongoing military engagement in Iran, and a majority expressed worry about that conflict. South Florida's Cuban community appears to view its own situation as distinct — a long-deferred reckoning with a regime it has opposed for more than six decades.
Why South Florida Is Ground Zero for This Debate
Miami-Dade County is home to the largest concentration of Cubans outside of Cuba itself, according to Florida International University. That demographic reality has made South Florida a uniquely important political and cultural arena when it comes to U.S.-Cuba relations, and it helps explain why a poll of 800 residents carries outsized national significance.
The region's Cuban community has historically been a reliable part of the Republican electoral coalition, particularly on issues of anti-communism and opposition to the Cuban government. But the Miami Herald poll suggests that loyalty has limits — especially when immigration enforcement begins to affect the community directly.
The survey was released the same week that three Miami-area Republican members of Congress — Reps. María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez — broke with the Trump administration to support legislation extending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, another immigrant group in South Florida facing deportation pressure. Their decision to cross party lines, joining eight other Republicans in a 224-204 House vote, reflected the same kind of local political calculus: representing districts where immigrant communities are large, economically embedded, and politically engaged.
Salazar said in March that she represents "thousands in my district who would face persecution or jail" if protections were stripped too soon. The broader pattern — Republican lawmakers in South Florida pushing back on administration immigration policy — suggests that the Herald poll is capturing something real about the political temperature in the region.
Broader Implications: A Fracture in an Old Coalition
The Miami Herald poll data should be read against a longer arc of Cuban American political history. For decades, the community's staunch anti-communism made it a reliable conservative constituency. Republican candidates from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump cultivated that relationship, and it paid electoral dividends — particularly in Florida, a perennial swing state.
But the second Trump term has introduced a set of pressures that are testing the durability of that alignment. The administration's immigration crackdowns do not distinguish neatly between the undocumented Salvadoran or Honduran migrant that hardline immigration restrictionists typically invoke and the Cuban national who arrived under a parole program fleeing an authoritarian government. When enforcement sweeps up members of the latter group, the political calculus inside South Florida's Cuban community shifts.
At the same time, the 79 percent support for military intervention in Cuba shows that the community has not simply broken with Trump across the board. On the core question of regime change — which the Trump administration has rhetorically supported through its economic pressure campaign and the state sponsor of terrorism redesignation — Cuban Americans remain broadly aligned with a hawkish posture. The disagreement is not about whether to pressure Cuba's government, but about whether Cubans in the United States should bear the cost of that pressure through deportations and loss of legal status.
That distinction matters for how policymakers and political strategists read these numbers. The Miami Herald poll does not describe a community defecting from conservative politics wholesale. It describes a community insisting that its own members not be treated as collateral damage in a broader immigration enforcement agenda — even one that, in its Cuba-specific dimensions, the community largely supports.
As U.S.-Cuba tensions continue to evolve and the humanitarian situation on the island deteriorates further, South Florida's Cuban diaspora is making clear that it intends to be heard on both counts.
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