‘You can’t deport them’: Mario Díaz-Balart says non-criminals shouldn’t fear Donald Trump’s expulsion plan

It was Super Bowl Tuesday for Mario Díaz-Balart. Image via AP.

The mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants is a signature policy of Donald Trump’s coming administration. But according to Florida’s senior Congressman, Sunshine State residents who live here illegally but otherwise obey the law have little to fear.

There are protections for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and other expatriates of countries under oppressive regimes who have since become productive members of American society, U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart said.

“You can’t deport them back to those countries,” he told Florida Politics. “You can’t deport somebody back to a country where you know they’re going to potentially suffer real persecution.”

Díaz-Balart stressed that the immediate targets of deportation after Trump retakes the White House on Jan. 20 will be the roughly 1.4 million immigrants living stateside with existing deportation orders and “thousands upon thousands of convicted criminals” — including more than 13,000 homicide convicts — who are noncitizens.

“That number is rather dramatic,” he said. “They’ll be the priority, and (Trump has) been very clear about this. You have to start with those who we know are dangerous, and that’s going to take some time. It’s not like there’s a little neighborhood with a sign that says, “I’m a rapist and I’m here illegally.’”

Díaz-Balart said the Trump administration and Congress will support efforts against tyrants like Nicolás Maduro, who on Friday was sworn into a third term as Venezuela’s President despite evidence that he lost last Summer’s election that spurred mass protests this week.

Maduro’s regime and others like it in Latin America are “very weak,” Díaz-Balart said.

To better and more quickly help asylum seekers, he continued, the U.S. should strengthen the border and crack down further on crossings.

“When we can control the border, when we start with these deportations, part of the goal is to make sure that the legal process can start moving again for those who have legitimate claims for asylum and are suffering the most,” he said.

That perspective has resonated in some of the densest migrant populations in the U.S. Voters in Miami-Dade, a long-dependable Democratic stronghold that Díaz-Balart has represented in Washington since 2003, swung heavily right in November, siding with a Republican presidential candidate for the first time this century and giving the GOP a clean sweep races for county constitutional offices.

Meanwhile, Starr County in Texas voted for a top-of-the-ticket Republican for the first time in 132 years.

“These are immigrants and families of immigrants, but they’re the ones who are suffering (from poor border control under Biden),” Díaz-Balart said. “And they know those with a legitimate claim who are trying to come here legally can’t do it now.”

Díaz-Balart’s comments during a Friday luncheon in Pinecrest hosted by Miami’s Community News came at roughly the same time President Joe Biden’s administration announced sweeping extensions to deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela.

Temporary protected status for roughly 600,000 Venezuelans, 232,000 El Salvadorians and 200,000 Haitians, among others, will continue into 2026. Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School, told The New York Times it is unlikely Trump will be able to deport them “any time soon.”