Former Pedro Pan kids, Democrats slam Lt. Gov. Nuñez over Cuban migrant remarks

A group of Democrats, former Pedro Pan kids and immigration advocates slammed Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez on Wednesday morning over comments she made last month over recently arrived Cuban migrants and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ goal to bus undocumented immigrants out of Florida.

Gladys Cañizares, a Cuban-American woman who came to the United States in the early 1960s as part of Operation Pedro Pan, a program that brought thousands of Cuban children to Miami without their parents following Fidel Castro’s rise to power, directly addressed Nuñez at a bilingual press conference hosted by FLIC Votes at Miami’s Freedom Tower.

“What were you thinking when you decided to support such a crazy move by Gov. DeSantis?” Cañizares said.

It was the latest development in a South Florida controversy that began with remarks Nuñez made in a Miami station Actualidad Radio interview in mid-August.

In response to questions about the record-setting migration from Cuba that has brought more than 175,000 people to the U.S. since last October, the state’s top Cuban-American official appeared to say that undocumented Cubans should be sent by bus to Delaware, President Joe Biden’s home state.

READ MORE: Did Florida’s lieutenant governor say ‘illegal’ Cuban migrants will be sent to Delaware?

Nuñez returned to the airwaves shortly after to say that her comments had been distorted, and doubled down on criticisms of Biden’s immigration policies. She also issued a statement in which she declared that “entering the country illegally” and “fleeing a dictatorship to seek asylum” were “two different things.”

“Misrepresenting that is offensive,” Nuñez said.

Nuñez’s remarks have become a rallying point for South Florida Democrats — who previously hosted a press conference condemning Nuñez for the same comments — as well as for immigration advocates and some former Pedro Pan kids who oppose Florida’s governor.

“I want to speak directly to my fellow Cuban Americans. I came 60 years ago, some came 40 years ago, others 20, others now. No matter when Cubans came, they have to be treated the same way we were,” added Cañizares, “No matter what the situation is, whether it’s political, economic, or even escaping violence ... w have to help them.”

Alicia Pelaez, who also came to the U.S. through Pedro Pan, said that she had worked with Nuñez’s parents and sister.

“She was not like that in the past,” she said. “I cannot believe that ambition is putting her down this path.”

Over the past year, former Pedro Pan kids and formerly unaccompanied Cuban children have become a fixture of public debate over DeSantis’ immigration policies. While some backed the governor’s decision earlier this year to direct state childcare regulators to not issue or replace the licenses of Florida shelters that house migrant children who have come alone to the United States, others publicly opposed the measure.

READ MORE: You should know better.’ Miami Democrats single out Nuñez over Cuban migrant comments

State Sen. Annette Taddeo, who is running for Congress, criticized DeSantis’ plan to transport undocumented immigrants out of Florida — which Nuñez’s comments thrust into the spotlight.

The busing program, which DeSantis has placed on standby, is designed to transport “unauthorized aliens” out of Florida through contracts with private companies. It is unclear whether DeSantis intends to roll out the program any time soon, even though the Legislature set aside $12 million for it.

“His base hates immigrants, and this city was created by immigrants, and we should value immigrants,” said Taddeo in Spanish.

Janelle Perez, the daughter of Cuban exiles and a Miami Democrat running for the state Senate, also participated in the morning press conference. She told reporters it is “not acceptable“ for DeSantis and the Legislature to use “the trauma of Cuban exiles for political gains.”

Elena Muñoz, a former unaccompanied minor who flew from Cuba to New York without her parents in the mid-1960s, said that she was bothered by the support that Nuñez, the daughter of Cuban exiles, was giving DeSantis’ immigration policies.

“Thanks to her father, she is here,” she said.

DeSantis defended his second-in-command on Wednesday at a separate press conference in Miami.

“I think it is just bizarre that they are trying to equate people who fled communism from Cuba under things like the Cuban adjustment plan and Pedro Pan to someone running drugs across the southern border. How dare they make that comparison,” DeSantis said.

The governor said Florida would not bus Cubans who come into the country illegally because his program will “not apply to refugees.”

“It applies to people illegally crossing the southern border who want to come to Florida,” DeSantis said. “If they are here illegally, that is a much different thing than being a refugee, so it does not apply to refugees.”

Many Cubans have entered the country illegally through the southern U.S. border or the sea prior to seeking asylum or refugee status from the federal government, including three Cubans whom the Miami Herald interviewed last summer when DeSantis made a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas.

In a statement to the Miami Herald later Wednesday, Nuñez said that Wednesday’s press conference was the “Democrats’ second lame attempt at conflating illegal immigration and people fleeing communist dictatorships seeking asylum.”

“It’s nothing more than political theater and left-wing activists trying to obfuscate their radical policies that promote open borders, illegal immigration, fentanyl pouring into our neighborhoods, and human trafficking on the rise,” she said.