Robin Peguero, the 40-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress in Florida's 27th District, in an interview with CiberCuba, accused Trump of being "the president who has deported more Cubans than any other president in the history of the United States."
The statement directly targets the Trump administration and seeks to mobilize the Cuban electorate in south Florida, historically loyal to the Republican Party, but which has expressed discontent with the current government's immigration policies.
Peguero, who has lived in Hialeah since he was five, comes across as someone who intimately understands the suffering of that community. "I was raised in Hialeah, among neighbors, friends, and schoolmates who are Cuban, who have shared with me the struggles of the Cuban people who are still suffering under the regime in Cuba."
One of its central commitments is to reactivate the processing of cases for Cubans with form I-220A under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which has been suspended by the Trump administration since January 20, 2025. "They have frozen the process for Cubans who have I-220A. We need to return to processing those cases under the Cuban Adjustment Act," he stated.
In that regard, he described the situation of those migrants in straightforward terms: "They are now in limbo, they are scared, because their cases are not being processed, and they no longer have the path to citizenship that they once had."
Data from the Department of Homeland Security reports 4,883 Cubans deported from January 2025 to February 2026, a number that exceeds the 3,385 during Trump's first term and the 416 under George W. Bush, thus supporting the candidate's claim.
Peguero also took the opportunity during the interview to attack his rival, the Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, accusing her of being two-faced: "The issue with Congresswoman Salazar is that she says one thing in English and says something completely different in Spanish."
According to Peguero, Salazar declared in English that she would support the return of Cubans who arrived after the protests on July 11 with I-220A, but she does not repeat this in Spanish. "She has only one constituent, which is the most important: President Donald J. Trump, and unfortunately not the members of our community who are suffering," he stated.
Regarding the approach to deportations, the former homicide prosecutor was clear: "All individuals here under I-220A who have no violent criminal history, of course, because those who are violent criminals must be deported. They have lost the privilege of being in this country."
Regarding Cuba, Peguero dismissed concerns that a democratic government would ease pressure on the dictatorship. "We must continue with maximum pressure on the government and the military authorities in Cuba, but not harm the Cuban civilian population."
In the interview, he also defined himself as a "capitalist democrat" and asserted that he is "completely opposed to communism and socialism in Cuba as well as here."
Peguero, a Harvard-educated lawyer with 20 years of public service and a former member of the investigative team of the January 6 committee, is competing in the Democratic primary on August 18, 2026 and has raised over $820,000 from approximately 6,000 individual donors.
The 27th District, with 74% Hispanic population and including Little Havana, Coral Gables, and parts of Kendall, is emerging as one of the most competitive seats in the 2026 elections and as a gauge of Latino support for Trump.
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