Politics & Government

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart sure loves cigars. He enjoys them so much that at a February 14 federal budget hearing, the GOP congressman railed against the Food and Drug Administration’s plans to impose new regulations on the cigar industry. He claimed the rules were needlessly “burdensome” and unfair.

In late 2016, a 17-year-old Guatemalan teen fled her home. Her father was a prominent local politician and had been receiving repeated extortion threats over the past year. He had continually refused to pay, so his enemies warned they would kidnap his daughter. The threat was serious enough that she made the long, treacherous journey to the United States, where her aunt and uncle lived, to seek asylum.

The entire state of Florida has been in something of an uproar after New Times reported Monday that the Trump administration had quietly re-opened a camp for child migrants in Homestead and placed nearly 1,200 children there without informing the public. Since then, politicians, reporters, and protesters have descended on…

Florida senator, immigration-detention-contractor-donation-taker, and walking logical fallacy Marco Rubio decided today, out of the kindness of whatever exists where his heart ought to be, to tour the Homestead Temporary Shelter of Unaccompanied Children. And because he is Marco Rubio and said words in public today, a bunch of protesters rightfully…

In April 2017, just a few weeks before Sweetwater’s elections, Commissioner Isolina Maroño and mayoral candidate Saul Díaz were riding in a car together when they were stopped by police. Officers found inside the vehicle multiple absentee ballots belonging to Maroño’s relatives.

His House Children’s Home, a Miami Gardens facility that has housed young migrant children for the federal government, was accused in Broward County court of letting a small child fatally suffocate underneath a blanket. The boy was not an immigrant but a young minor brought to the facility in 2007 after being taken from his parents in Broward by the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The U.S. government has been sending unaccompanied immigrant minors to a Miami Gardens shelter called His House Children’s Home since at least 2008. In the past decade, the facility has been reportedly investigated by child-welfare advocates for abuse and has been cited by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for “possibly” failing to follow policy when handling the cases of at least 652 children.

Running a detention camp for migrant children taken from their parents is not great for PR. Two days after New Times broke news that the Trump administration had quietly sent more than 1,000 migrant children to a guarded compound in Homestead, Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola is threatening to ban one of the contractors running the facility, Comprehensive Health Services, from doing business in his city.

Nearly 48 hours after New Times first reported that the federal government had quietly reopened a child-migrant compound outside Miami and placed an estimated 1,000 kids there, the U.S. representative from the district where the facility stands says he is “troubled” by the fact that other sitting lawmakers were rejected from entering the facility.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has responded to news of a child-migrant camp opening in his state by, in part, throwing a bunch of other politicians under the bus. In a two-page letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday, Scott disclosed that “Florida’s congressional delegation” and “state and local officials” were told…

In recent years, the Miami Design Preservation League has become one of the loudest voices against harmful development across the county. It has battled gentrification in Little Havana, the trend of McMansions replacing historic homes, and a plan to turn the Miami Beach Community Church courtyard into a retail store. In many cases, the scrappy nonprofit has challenged the county’s biggest developers and lobbyists.

After New Times yesterday broke the news that President Trump’s Office of Refugee Resettlement had quietly reopened a heavily guarded compound outside Miami and placed an estimated 1,000 children there, reporters descended. Security guards at the facility first threatened a New Times journalist with arrest and later did the same to reporters for the Miami Herald and WPLG, who stuck around to photograph the site near Homestead Air Reserve Base.

Carlos Curbelo, the allegedly moderate Republican U.S. representative who represents South Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys, is staking his reelection effort on passing a bill protecting “Dreamers,” a class of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Curbelo’s 26th congressional district is a Democrat-heavy swing area that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the congressman seems terrified he might lose his seat this November.

Thanks to the incredible work of the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, Americans learned in September 2016 — two months before the presidential election — that Donald Trump’s web of personal charities seemed about as legitimate as vending machine companies run by the Genovese crime family. Fahrenthold won a Pulitzer Prize for doggedly tracking how Trump, among other things, used a quarter-million dollars from his charity to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit corporations.

Carlos Curbelo, the congressman for South Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys who voted in 2017 for a failed Obamacare-repeal package and successful tax cut for the wealthy, appears to be trying to pin his 2018 reelection bid on a last-ditch effort to reinstate the DREAM Act. Curbelo’s district voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016…

The GEO Group, the second-largest private-prison operator in America, is headquartered in Boca Raton and loves greasing the Florida political system. GEO is one of the most powerful political donors in the state. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican politician who hasn’t accepted a few thousand dollars in campaign bucks from the giant, and more than a fair share of local Democrats have done the same.

North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo pleaded guilty in April to a raft of campaign-finance violations, including diverting at least $5,000 in campaign money to shell corporations he and his family used to pay off personal expenses. Vallejo, age 51, stepped down as mayor and received three months of house arrest plus probation.

This past May 11, county commission candidate and longtime GOP insider Alex Diaz de la Portilla glad-handed seniors at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Center. Slinging heaping plates of paella right alongside him was Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, a fellow Trump-backing MAGA warrior who was among Diaz de la Portilla’s biggest backers in his failed bid for office.

In 2016, after years of financial mismanagement left Opa-locka nearly $8 million in debt, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency and placed city officials on a restrictive spending diet. A state oversight board tasked with keeping the city on track warned that the belt-tightening might take some getting used to…