Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar on Sunday called the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown “un-American” in a biting statement to the Miami Herald.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued one of its most sweeping restrictions on immigration to date, ordering a pause of all immigration applications from nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and 16 other so-called “high risk” countries.

The new directive to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — issued in the wake of the fatal shooting in Washington, D.C., of two National Guardsmen, allegedly by an Afghan man — affects everything from green card applications to citizenship ceremonies for individuals from the 19 countries. The policy also paused all pending asylum claims, regardless of the applicant’s country of origin.

In the statement, Salazar — one of only a few Cuban Americans in Congress — said the new policy amounted to “collective punishment” of “the innocent for the sins of the guilty.”

“Freezing asylum, green card, and citizenship processes is not the answer. It punishes hardworking, law-abiding immigrants who followed every step of the legal process,” said Salazar, who has advocated for compassionate immigration policies as Trump pursues his mass-deportation agenda. “That is unfair, un-American, and it goes against everything this country stands for. Background checks already exist to stop terrorists and they should.”

Salazar’s strongly worded statement — which also mentioned how thousands of immigrants in South Florida who applied legally and “waited their turn” would be affected — was more critical of the Trump administration than a joint statement released Wednesday by Miami’s two other Republican members of congress, U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez.

In their statement, the Cuban-American lawmakers blamed former President Joe Biden for the change in immigration policy, describing it as the aftermath of his administration’s “reckless abandonment of border security and its systematic failure to properly vet nearly 10 million people...”

“For four years, our urgent warnings ... about the consequences of the Biden Administration’s grotesquely irresponsible open-border policies and non-existent vetting were ignored,” the joint statement said. “Today, we are unfortunately dealing with the consequences.”

Diaz-Balart and Gimenez called Trump’s immigration efforts part of “protecting national security by restoring order, enforcing the rule of law, and strengthening vetting.”

Rising concern in Miami

The new DHS policy has created anxiety in South Florida, home to many immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean who are already coping with years-long backlogs for asylum interviews, green cards and naturalization ceremonies, immigration attorneys told the Herald.

Over a million people from Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti lost legal protections when Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole established under the Biden administration were ended earlier this year. Many have sought to remain in the U.S. by applying for asylum, or in the case of Cubans, adjusting their status under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows them to become a permanent U.S. resident after being in the country for a year and one day.

South Floridians from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela expecting to become U.S. citizens this week learned instead that their naturalization ceremonies had been canceled after the announcement, according to multiple immigration attorneys.

With the recent announcement, all now find themselves once more in legal limbo.

(Miami Herald reporters Verónica Egui Brito, Jacqueline Charles, Nora Gámez Torres and Raisa Habersham contributed to this report.)

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