Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Florida, has made waves by publicly breaking with President Donald Trump over immigration.

"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," Salazar says in a new campaign ad. "The same Hispanics that helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today."

In 2024, voters broadly trusted Republicans to handle illegal immigration. Through incompetence and cruelty, the Trump administration has lost that goodwill. The last election showed Republicans have a path forward on immigration. But to take it, they need to ditch the cruel memes and aggressive tactics that have plagued Trump's second term.

Salazar is right: Hispanics were a major part of Trump's 2024 victory. According to Pew Research Center, the president nearly tied former Vice President Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, a group former President Joe Biden won by 25 percentage points in 2020.

Since then, Trump's gains among Hispanics have evaporated. In February 2025, according to Pew, 93% of Hispanics who voted for Trump approved of the job he was doing. By April of this year, just 66% did. Over the same stretch, his approval among all Hispanic adults fell from 36% to 22%, while among non-Hispanic adults, it slipped from 49% to 37%.

The drop in support can be attributed largely to the administration's mishandling of........

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