El Salvador President Nayib Bukele might have discovered the perfect description for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new method to dictatorial regimes: a laughing emoji.
After a federal district decide ordered the administration to cease a U.S. flight deporting Venezuelans to his nation, Bukele wrote on X, after the flight departed: “Oopsie…Too late.’’ He added the symbol known as “face with tears of joy.”
Rubio reposted it.
For a lot of who’ve watched Rubio’s profession, it was wildly incongruous to see him snubbing a U.S. courtroom over immigrants expelled to a brutal jail in a rustic dominated by an authoritarian.
Rubio, a lawyer, constructed his political profession speaking about being “the son of immigrants and exiles” and condemning the human rights abuses in nations resembling Cuba, which his dad and mom left throughout the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
However now, as considered one of Trump’s prime lieutenants, Rubio isn’t solely prepared to companion with the aggressive and duplicitous Bukele, he has thrown his full help behind an inhumane purge of immigrants from america with out due course of.
A dramatic shift
That’s fairly a shift from the Marco Rubio of 2008, when he was serving as Florida’s Home speaker — the primary Cuban American to carry that job. Again then, the anti-immigration fervor of the Tea Get together was simply beginning to emerge.
Florida lawmakers from each events had proposed dozens of payments — starting from a Democratic lawmaker’s plan to require police to report suspected undocumented immigrants to Republican plans to ban authorities advantages for undocumented adults. However that model of Rubio was far more delicate to the political repercussions of an immigration crackdown. He refused to present any of the payments a listening to and advised legislators he didn’t wish to seem “anti-immigrant.”
4 years later, Rubio spoke fondly of his upbringing by immigrant dad and mom as he addressed the Republican Nationwide Conference. He extolled the virtues of “American exceptionalism” and the promise of a rustic “founded on the principle that every person has God-given rights.”
It’s exhausting to think about Rubio giving that speech at this time, particularly after a Venezuelan man convicted of killing Georgia nursing pupil Laken Riley was afforded extra due course of than the Cuban enterprise proprietor with no legal historical past who was snatched from his driveway by ICE brokers in Miami two weeks in the past. (The person’s spouse mentioned the person had spent years renewing work permits and attempting to navigate the labyrinth of paperwork to acquire citizenship.)
The deportation ways of at this time are additionally removed from the long run Rubio imagined in 2013 when, as one of many bi-partisan group of senators generally known as the “Gang of Eight,” he proposed an immigration reform plan that supplied a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants however was by no means handed. It was “in our national interest” to deliver individuals “out of the shadows,” Rubio mentioned on the time. “This is who we are. We are the most compassionate nation on earth.”
Three years in the past, Rubio was nonetheless on the facet of compassion and legislation. He criticized Bukele, who had declared a state of emergency due to widespread gang violence after which used the navy to arrest hundreds of individuals with out due course of. Rubio referred to as it “a really troubling situation” and famous Bukele “very openly criticizes and mocks the U.S. and other Western institutions.”
However Rubio is doing the mocking now. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” he boasted lately, after canceling a whole bunch of visas.
He has ordered his employees to scour the social media accounts of visa candidates and deport anybody responsible of making a “ruckus.”
It’s true that the State Division has broad authority to revoke a visa from somebody they take into account a menace. However in keeping with legislation, it should be for very particular international coverage causes.
Most of the international college students caught up in Rubio’s sweep have been accused of no crime and seem to have been focused as a result of the administration finds their pro-Palestinian speech objectionable. Some have been imprisoned or denied due course of. Some are everlasting residents or married to U.S. residents.
The political threat
Dario Moreno, a professor of political science at Florida Worldwide College in Miami who co-taught many lessons with Rubio on the college, mentioned he doesn’t understand how Rubio is squaring the contradictions in his positions at this time with these of the previous, however he thinks there’s political threat to a number of the administration’s immigration insurance policies.
“I don’t think Cuban Americans, or Latinos in South Florida, probably agree with the roundup,” he advised me.
“Putting away privileged students at Ivy League universities or people who look like gang members, that doesn’t bother people,” he mentioned. What does upset them is the current Trump order requiring a half-million individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to go away the U.S. by the tip of the month, though they got work permits within the U.S. underneath a Biden-era humanitarian parole program.
Students additionally inform me they see harmful parallels between the Castro and Trump administration’s insurance policies. They appeared stunned that Rubio doesn’t see them, too.
“(Castro’s) discourse was essentially the same as Trump’s, which is, if you don’t agree, get out of this country, and if you’re not the right kind of Cuban then you don’t belong here,” mentioned Lillian Guerra, a professor of Cuban and Caribbean historical past on the College of Florida. “Unless he knows nothing about the actual factors of the authoritarian state in Cuba, one could not understand how Marco Rubio could be endorsing these policies and be a spokesman for them.”
Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and worldwide relations at Florida Worldwide College, mentioned Rubio’s about-face stems from political pragmatism and international coverage realism.
Rubio is unlikely to run for elected workplace once more except he runs for president, so he has turned his allegiance to Trump. He was appointed to “serve only one person — the president who has cast aside multilateralism and any logic of American pluralism,” Gamarra defined.
And the “realist” college of thought believes a rustic’s nationwide pursuits are extra vital than its ideological underpinnings, he mentioned. The method permits america to “expel people to a country that is known for cruel and inhumane treatment,” Gamarra advised me. “So Fidel’s torturing is bad, but if Bukele is doing it, it’s good.”
That’s why Rubio and Bukele can now share amusing. The joke’s on anybody who doesn’t get it.
Mary Ellen Klas is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
