‘A tragic moment’: Immigration crackdown intensifies in Doral, home to thousands of Venezuelans

The largest Venezuelan-American community in the United States is seeing an increase in immigration raids as South Florida experiences a surge in detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a Doral city councilman, an immigration attorney and online reports.

Immigration is deeply woven into everyday life in Doral. About 70% of its residents were born outside the United States, and around 40% are Venezuelan origin, according to the U.S. Census. The city is also home to large communities from Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries.

Rafael Pineyro, the only Venezuelan-American member of the Doral City Council, is a Republican who has supported the Trump administration. Pineyro has also been positioning himself as a candidate for mayor in 2028, when Christi Fraga’s current term ends. But as immigration enforcement has intensified, Pineyro has taken an increasingly vocal position on the treatment of Venezuelans and other immigrant communities, and the way federal immigration policies are being carried out.

Since Trump returned to office last year, Pineyro has urged the president to “find a solution for law-abiding Venezuelans,” after the administration revoked the Temporary Protected Status granted to Venezuelans under the Biden administration amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

The Trump administration’s decision stripped the temporary legal protections from more than 650,000 Venezuelans nationwide, along with another 700,000 people from other countries, including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Haiti. With so many Venezuelans in Doral, the issue is particularly significant for Pineyro’s constituents.

He has increased his opposition to some of the actions taking place in the northwest Miami-Dade city, describing the situation as a “tragic moment.” The developments have placed Pineyro in an unusual position: A Republican who has supported the Trump administration and who says he still believes criminals should be deported, but who draws the line when it comes to families and people with pending immigration cases.

“We have never had experienced detention of families in our community,” Pineyro said during a livestreamed conversation with immigration attorney John De La Vega. “There has to be a differentiation between criminals, who have to be deported, and families with pending processes.”

Dispute over Doral police and ICE

The role of the Doral Police Department in immigration enforcement has become a point of contention. De La Vega, who regularly shares updates online about immigration news, raised concerns about the increase in immigration raids in Doral, and said the police department is working in collaboration with ICE. Pineyro disputed the claim, saying it is false.

The public disagreement between De La Vega and Pineyro, which unfolded through posts on their respective social-media profiles, is what eventually led to a livestreamed conversation between the two on Monday evening, when they met online.

During the livestream, Pineyro said he does not agree with the administration’s current immigration crackdown, calling some of the enforcement actions “inhuman.”

He said he is particularly concerned about people who are being targeted while they have pending political asylum cases.

“I want to make this clear: I categorically reject the way it is taking place. For the first time, we are facing circumstances where hardworking people and professionals with pending immigration cases are being detained,” Pineyro said. “That is what I reject in every communication [with the Trump administration] whenever I have the chance. It is inhumane. We have never seen anything like it.”

Pineyro added that, although Doral signed a 287(g) agreement last year that allows participating local law-enforcement agencies to perform certain immigration-related functions under federal supervision, Doral police officers have not received the training required to make immigration arrests.

READ MORE: Doral, Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan stronghold, to empower cops in Trump immigration crackdown

He said that, as a federal agency, ICE does not need permission from a city, municipality or county to carry out federal immigration enforcement. However, he strongly rejected the way the enforcement is currently being conducted.

Raids in Doral

Pineyro’s concerns come as immigration enforcement has become increasingly visible in Doral, where the numbers show a significant increase in arrests over the past few months.

According to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California-Berkeley and UCLA, which uses public-records litigation to obtain, publish and analyze U.S. government immigration-enforcement data, Doral recorded just three immigration arrests in December. By March, that number had climbed to 16. Arrests then fell to eight in April and seven in May, before rising again to 12 in June and 17 in July.

The detention numbers are only one indication of what residents say they are experiencing on the ground.

According to ICEOUT.org, a community-driven online platform used to report, track and map suspected immigration-enforcement activity in real time, residents have reported ICE and Border Patrol vehicles in Doral on a regular basis during the past two months. Some reports describe agents stopping people and asking them to provide proof of residency or U.S. citizenship, while other reports say people who have ongoing immigration cases have been detained.

The activity appears concentrated along Northwest 87th Avenue, 107th Avenue, 36th Street and 41st Street, although encounters have also been documented on numerous other areas of the city. The accounts involve ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, the Department of Homeland Security, other federal immigration authorities, as well as undercover cars.

Those reports have spilled into Doral’s online community. Social-media profiles have increasingly featured GoFundMe campaigns from families seeking financial assistance after a relative was arrested in Doral. Some families are asking for help paying immigration bonds or hiring attorneys to represent detained relatives.

‘Praying for change’

The fear has reached Pineyro’s own family.

His wife, Yeraldine Pineyro, recently shared two posts on her Instagram account describing the anxiety many families are experiencing amid increased immigration enforcement. In the posts, she spoke about the fear some parents feel about even taking their children to school, reflecting how the uncertainty surrounding immigration raids is affecting everyday life in the community.

“I know many people, particularly Venezuelans, who have been affected by immigration enforcement, people with immigration processes who, although they don’t have legal status, have their cases pending,” Yeraldine Pineyro said. “They are paying taxes, paying for their work permits, doing things the right way, and it looks like those things don’t matter anymore. Things have changed, but I don’t think they are right.”

She said families are increasingly afraid to leave their homes, limiting their activities to necessities such as going to the grocery store, going to work and taking their children to school.

“Everything is done with fear,” she said. “We have to raise our voices and be emphatic. We have to ask God that all of this change.”

For families living in a city with one of the country’s largest concentrations of Venezuelan immigrants, the enforcement activity has created a growing sense of uncertainty. Reports of arrests, vehicle stops and requests for documentation have become part of everyday conversations among residents, while families with detained relatives face the additional financial burden of securing legal representation and, in some cases, paying immigration bonds.

Pineyro criticized the broader U.S. immigration system, saying its failures cannot be blamed solely on one political party. He called for comprehensive immigration reform and urged residents to participate in the political process, including voting in November.

“I know people with pending asylum for 15, 20 years,” he said. “It’s not their fault. It is the blame of a system that has failed.”