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WATCH • IMMIGRATION

Voices on the Trail: A Cuban-American Floridian on Immigration

David Jolly for Florida Published: 2026-05-21 Last updated: 2026-05-21
David Jolly in conversation with a Cuban-American Floridian about immigration

Key moments

1:32

"The community was thriving and safe, and now the president sends in ICE to disrupt communities to try to solve a problem that never existed."

2:28

"I talk about values a lot before policies. The policies are easy if we can decide on the values."

2:53

"If we fail to embrace the refugee, we might as well throw the Statue of Liberty into the East River. Those are values."

What this video is

This is a conversation, not a speech. Standing in Mayor Maurice Ferré Park in Miami, David Jolly listens as a woman who came from Cuba in 1960 describes what enforcement is doing to her neighbors today.[1] One Floridian. One story. The whole immigration question, made human.

What is said

The argument is simple: communities were thriving and safe, and enforcement was sent to solve a problem that never existed. See the exchange at 1:18 and the "values before policies" turn at 2:28. For the full plan, the Immigration hub carries where David Jolly stands.

Transcript

Verified transcript of the video above.

0:04 I'm from Cuba. I came in in 1960. Okay. I became a citizen nine years later, and at that time, things were easier, especially for Cubans.
0:16 Tell me how, given your journey, how you reflect on what we're seeing around us when it comes to welcoming the refugee, the asylum, the immigrant?
0:24 Well, I'm really a part of what's going on. And you had seen it on the news and everywhere.
0:30 We talked about this issue several years ago with the emergence of Trump as the president and his anti-immigrant, anti-immigration. It's xenophobic. It's cruel, and I get it. But I don't know that it resonated. But I feel like now people, everyone understands cruelty and they understand broken promises. And it seems that the heartbreak and the anger is real, like it's never been before. Is that your experience?
0:57 Yes, yes. And it's affecting not only immigrants. They're affecting the whole communities. Look at what happened in Minneapolis, right? People are angry. They don't want that in their neighborhood. They don't want their neighbors to be taken away like that without due process or anything. Without no proof of anything.
1:18 People are angry. This seems like such an odd question. Were they fearful before? Was there a problem that existed that required ICE to step in?
1:30 No, they weren't, of course.
1:32 The community, people were going to work putting food on the table for their children, sending their kids to school. The community was thriving and safe, and now the president sends in ICE to disrupt communities to try to solve a problem that never existed.
1:48 Exactly. Making it worse. Making it a problem now, which it wasn't before.
1:54 That's right. Yeah. Kids are afraid to go to school. Parents are afraid to go to work.
1:59 I think your heart is clear on this, but what would your message be for the current governor, the president, the next governor? What's your message in this moment about that?
2:11 Get together, Republicans and Democrats, to design a real immigration, I don't know how to call it now, a system that works, and it's not abusive and cruel because this is cruelty.
2:28 I talk about values a lot before policies. The policies are easy if we can decide on the values. If we become a state or a country that celebrates the economic and cultural contributions of our immigrant communities, if we recognize that the misinformation from our president and governor has affected how we approach this.
2:53 There's a lower propensity of violent and property crimes in immigrant communities than our native born communities. But this governor and our president would let you think that immigration is somehow the greatest threat we face. And it's wrong. And I think the values, particularly as we stand in Miami, where I grew up here during the Mariel boatlift, and I lived here when the Cuban refugees were rounded up and put in the Orange Bowl. We're standing in Mayor Ferré Park, and it was the mayor who said, if we fail to embrace the refugee, we might as well throw the Statue of Liberty into the East River. Those are values. The values are contrary to who we are as a people, who we can be as a country.

Related questions

What does Jolly mean by "values before policies"?

His framing: the policies are easy if we can decide on the values. Most immigration debates collapse into yelling about specific provisions because the underlying values are contested. Agree that families should not be disrupted without due process, that economic and cultural contributions are real, and the policy fights get smaller. See the video at 2:28 for the full turn in this conversation.

What did Jolly say about ICE in Florida?

In the video at 1:32: "People were going to work putting food on the table for their children, sending their kids to school. The community was thriving and safe, and now the president sends in ICE to disrupt communities to try to solve a problem that never existed." The Florida data backs the point. Federal immigration arrests in Florida totaled 20,629 between January 20 and October 15, 2025, and ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal history rose more than 450% that June.[2]

Do immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans?

No. Substantially less. Cato Institute analysis of Census data found 11% of native-born Americans in the 1990 birth cohort had been incarcerated by age 33, compared with only 3% of immigrants.[3] This is the empirical foundation for the claim in the video at 2:53 about a lower propensity of crime in immigrant communities.

What did Mayor Ferré say about refugees that Jolly references?

Standing in the park named for him, Jolly recalls the mayor's line: if we fail to embrace the refugee, we might as well throw the Statue of Liberty into the East River. Maurice Ferré was Miami's first Hispanic mayor, serving six terms from 1973 to 1985, and he oversaw the city through the Mariel boatlift.[4] Hear the reference in the video at 2:53.

Does Jolly support border security?

Yes. His framing: we can solve border security, we can solve compassionate immigration reform, we can solve a pathway to legal status and to work. Border security and humane treatment of immigrants are not opposites. His "fights crime, not communities" approach treats border enforcement as a federal question while pointing out that Florida's state-level laws target people already settled, working, and contributing.[5]

More on this topic

OverviewImmigration In depthWhat are David Jolly's values on welcoming immigrants and refugees? In depthWhy are immigrant communities being torn apart by ICE raids? In depthAs Governor - Immigration In depthHow will David Jolly treat immigrant communities as governor?

Sources

  1. David Jolly interview at Mayor Ferré Park, Miami (video transcript) , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USP3pY0v9eE · 2026-05-21
  2. WUSF (Deportation Data Project), Who did ICE arrest in Florida , https://www.wusf.org/politics-issues/2026-03-10/who-did-ice-arrest-in-florida-last-year · 2026-03-10
  3. Cato Institute, Immigrants have lower lifetime incarceration rates than native-born Americans , https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-have-lower-lifetime-incarceration-rates-native-born-americans · 2025-04-01
  4. Maurice Ferré, biographical summary , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ferr%C3%A9 · 2019-09-19
  5. David Jolly, Fighting Crime, not Communities , https://davidjolly.com/fighting-crime-not-communities · 2024-01-01

This isn't about statistics. It's about neighbors.

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