The Trump administration argues that the beefed-up military presence across the Caribbean and strikes of alleged drug-running boats are a way to put pressure on Nicolás Maduro, who the president says is sending drugs and criminals to the United States.

There could be a local political advantage for him, too, with signs suggesting frustrations over his administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelans back to the South American country are giving way to anticipation of regime change.

“We were seeing a lot of buyers’ remorse in May,” said Eduardo Gamarra, director of Florida International University’s Latino Public Opinion Forum. “Now it looks like the remorse is not as intense as it was then.”

Rafael Pineyro, a Republican city councilman in Doral, Florida, home to a large concentration of Venezuelan expats, agreed that frustrations are waning. “I think that that has been changing since certainly the administration has been taking this approach.”

Trump, whose deadly strikes have been criticized by experts as extrajudicial killings carried out without congressional approval, has downplayed the extent to which regime change in Venezuela is a goal. Even so, Pineyro said there have been conversations with police in Doral about preparing for the possibility of large-scale celebrations in reaction to the possible ouster of Venezuelan strongman Maduro.

“There is a lot of expectation, a lot of hope,” Pineyro said.

The shifting attitude toward Trump comes as Venezuelans in South Florida are living two conflicting realities: hope that the Trump administration’s actions could lead to democratic governance in their homeland and fear as he threatens to deport hundreds of thousands of them to a country the United States deems too unsafe for Americans to visit.

“The real solution is for that narco cartel to not be in control of that country and I think people in our community understand that,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, whose district includes Doral. “They don’t lose sight of — while there are other issues that we can talk about immigration, TPS, all those things — frankly, all of this is caused by this situation in Venezuela.”

Growing backlash

Local hope for celebration is cautious. As the Trump administration zeroes in on recently-arrived Venezuelans as part of its mass-deportation efforts, some South Florida Venezuelans describe Trump’s position towards their homeland and its immigrant communities as contradictory and inconsistent.

Adelys Ferro, a Venezuelan American community leader involved in the legal fight against the Trump administration’s termination of deportation protections for scores of Venezuelans, told the Herald there were “great expectations, but also great incredulity in the community.”

“Even if there is a wish in the community for Maduro to leave power and for there to be a transition towards democracy, the ambiguous attitude of the administration is keeping us in suspense,” said Ferro.

Since returning to office, Trump has restarted direct deportations to Venezuela, moved to strip over 500,000 Venezuelans from their deportation protections under Temporary Protected Status and separately ended a parole process that allowed over 117,000 Venezuelans live and work legally in the United States. Many recently arrived Venezuelans were beneficiaries of both programs.

His administration says TPS is not in American interests and that conditions like health care and public safety in Venezuela have improved enough for a safe return — even though the Department of State maintains a “do not travel” advisory to the South American country.

He has invoked centuries-old wartime powers to deport over 230 Venezuelan immigrants to a Salvadorean prison, accusing them of being members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. Records obtained by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica later showed that the Trump administration knew that most of them had no U.S. conviction. Trump and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem have broadly characterized Venezuelans immigrants as criminals.

Trump also accuses Caracas of coordinating with Tren de Aragua to “invade” the United States. Intelligence reports have said that Maduro does not exert control over the group, which Trump designated as a terrorist organization on his first day in office. Tren de Aragua experts have also told the Herald the Trump administration is overblowing the group’s influence.

In late July, Trump renewed Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela. The development came months after Trump had revoked it, saying that Maduro’s government had been too slow taking back deportees under a deal brokered in February when special envoy to Venezuela Richard Grenell went to Caracas.

Some say that despite Trump’s seemingly hard-line stance toward Maduro, striking oil deals with Caracas legitimizes the country’s government. Gamarra, the FIU professor, told the Herald that certain Venezuelans think that Trump is “exchanging exiles and refugees, if you will, for oil.”

Elliot Abrams, a Republican and special representative to Venezuela in the first Trump administration, called the oil deals “incoherent.”

“On the one hand, the rhetoric against Maduro is fierce,” he added. “On the other hand, they let Chevron go back to work in Venezuela, which is an immediate benefit to the regime. So I don’t think that’s coherent.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Miami Herald in a statement that Maduro is an illegitimate president running a “narco-terror cartel.”

“President Trump has been abundantly clear — cartels have long wrought devastating consequences on American communities, but this President is prepared to use every lever to stop drugs from flooding in to our country and bring those responsible to justice,” she added.

Political implications

Democrats have repeatedly called Trump’s approach to Venezuela a glaring contradiction.

“Him using the military to just look tough and distract people from his attempts to wine and dine Maduro in exchange for help with deportations is just that, a distraction,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Herald.

Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairwoman and immigration attorney Laura Kelley said the overriding sentiment she’s hearing from Venezuelans and clients is fear, as the ongoing legal battle over the administration’s attempted rollback of TPS looms largest.

“We see that restaurants are shutting down, not just because of lack of workers, but lack of consumers. People are too afraid to go out into the streets, to purchase things, to go to school. People are afraid,” Kelley said. “The TPS recipients themselves, the parole recipients themselves, their family members — they’re afraid.”

Miami’s Republican members in Congress have been stuck in the middle for months. They’ve remained supportive of the president, but united in opposition to rollbacks of certain deportation protections.

Many South Florida Venezuelans view Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who blasted Havana and Caracas as “enemies of humanity” during his first official visit as secretary of state to Latin America, as a vocal critic who will take a hard-line stance against Maduro.

But the voice of Rubio has often appeared publicly in tension with that of Grenell. Maduro said in a news conference earlier this month he maintains two lines of communication with the administration: one in Grenell and in Rubio.

Díaz-Balart minimized Grenell’s sway in the administration — even though Grenell has been part of Trump’s inner circle dating back to his role as former acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first administration.

“Was there that one moment that was concerning?” Díaz-Balart asked rhetorically of Grenell’s meeting with Maduro earlier this year. “But it wasn’t the president. It was one individual. And after that, we’ve seen very clearly what this president’s position is and has been, which is why we are extremely, extremely supportive of what the president is doing.”

This is not the first time Maduro’s ouster has felt imminent in South Florida. Some Venezuelans point back to the period of heightened, yet unrealized hope for regime change after Trump recognized Juan Guaidó as interim leader in 2019.

For Pineyro, the Doral councilman, there’s a wait-and-see feeling about Trump now.

“If we enter into December or next year without any actions, same regime, nothing changed,” he said, “ I do see some, probably, potential questions about what happened.”

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