Tag Archives: South Florida

New York Times: Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner

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Paul Walczak’s pardon application cited his mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary.

As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president.

Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.

Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.

Mr. Walczak’s pardon application argued that his criminal prosecution was motivated more by his mother’s efforts for Mr. Trump than by his admitted use of money earmarked for employees’ taxes to fund an extravagant lifestyle.

Still, weeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.

Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

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trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html

Politico: The Pro-Trump Cuban Rapper About to Be Deported

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The predicament of the rapper known as ‘El Funky’ reveals the deeply conflicted anti-Castro and pro-Trump politics of South Florida.

In 2021, like many Cubans and Cuban Americans that summer, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was jamming to “Patria y Vida,” the Grammy-winning protest anthem that became a rallying cry for dissidents in Cuba. The hip-hop song, whose title translates to “Homeland and Life,” directly rebuked Fidel Castro’s revolutionary slogan, “Patria o Muerte” — “Homeland or Death.” That was a cause that resonated with Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, so much that in 2023, he introduced the “Patria y Vida Act,” “protecting against Tyrants” and expanding internet service in Cuba.

Now, one of the song’s central voices, Cuban rapper Eliéxer Márquez Duany — better known as El Funky — faces removal from the United States. Earlier this month, U.S. immigration authorities denied Márquez Duany’s residency application under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. He has less than 30 days to leave the U.S. or face deportation and likely imprisonment in Cuba, since his music helped fuel the largest anti-government protests in Cuba in decades.

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Márquez Duany’s journey from resistance icon to deportation case began in February 2021, when he and other artists released “Patria y Vida.” The song, featuring rappers and musicians both on and off the island, denounced repression in Cuba and called for change. Two of its creators, Maykel Osorbo and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, are currently in prison in Cuba for their participation in the project and other protests. Meanwhile, the song’s banned status on the island only amplified its power: It became the de facto anthem of the unprecedented protests during the summer of 2021.

By then, Márquez Duany had already been under house arrest for months, kept from participating in the demonstrations by guards posted outside his home. When the Latin Grammy Awards sent him an invitation a few months later, Márquez Duany knew it was likely his only chance to escape. As is customary, a Cuban government official escorted him to the airport.

“What we want is for you to leave,” he says the official told him. “Go, but don’t come back because you’re not welcome here.”

Once in Miami, Márquez Duany married a Cuban American, found a maintenance job at a Christian school, and kept recording music. He applied to adjust his legal status under the CAA, which allows Cubans paroled into the U.S. to claim permanent residency after one year.

He assumed the law still stood firmly behind him. But the ground had already shifted.

The Pro-Trump Cuban Rapper About to Be Deported
The predicament of the rapper known as ‘El Funky’ reveals the deeply conflicted anti-Castro and pro-Trump politics of South Florida.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/23/hes-a-pro-trump-rapper-and-a-cuban-dissident-the-trump-administration-is-deporting-him-anyway-00367085

Miami Herald: Supreme Court ruling on TPS stuns South Florida, leaves Venezuelan families in fear

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A U.S Supreme Court ruling that allows the Trump administration to strip deportation protections and work permits from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans — including many Miami area residents — sent shock waves through South Florida and across the Sunshine State on Monday.

“That the U.S. would terminate the protections for Venezuelans now, when nothing has improved back home, is just unbelievable,” said Betsy Diaz, a Venezuelan-American in Hialeah whose two daughters, five grandchildren and several other relatives will lose the protections.

In a two-paragraph order, the nation’s highest court on Monday granted an emergency request from the White House to roll back a lower court judge’s order that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Venezuelans. It was part of an ongoing lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco challenging the Trump administration’s February decision to revoke the protections granted to Venezuelans and other nationals from certain countries in turmoil.

The court provided no explanation for why it had lifted the lower court judge’s order, which prevented the Trump administration from removing the protections while the litigation is ongoing.

Supreme Court ruling on TPS stuns South Florida, leaves Venezuelan families in fear
“Unbelievable,” said a Venezuelan American grandmother in Hialeah

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article306751681.html

Raw Story: Ted Cruz thrown under bus as GOP senator desperately courts Trump ahead of brutal primary

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is fighting for his political life, according to new reporting from Axios.

The longtime Texas senator “is boasting a 99% voting record with President Trump in a new memo provided first to Axios,” said the report. This comes as Cornyn “and his firebrand primary challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, are battling to win Trump’s coveted endorsement in what is quickly shaping up to be the most dramatic and expensive GOP primary of the cycle.”

“Cornyn’s team is using fellow Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) as a foil, tallying the votes to tout that Cruz has voted against Trump more often than Cornyn,” said the report. “Over Trump’s first term and so far in his second, Cornyn voted in line with Trump 99.2% of the time while Cruz voted with him 96.6% of the time, according to the data, which removed duplicative procedural votes.”

It’s a dog-eat-dog world! Let them devour one another!

Ted Cruz thrown under bus as GOP senator desperately courts Trump ahead of brutal primary
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is fighting for his political life, according to new reporting from Axios. The longtime Texas senator “is boasting a 99% voting record with President Trump in a new memo provided first to Axios,” said the report. This comes as Cornyn “and his firebrand primary challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, are battling to wi…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ted-cruz-thrown-under-bus-as-gop-senator-desperately-courts-trump-ahead-of-brutal-primary/ar-AA1E4Nyu

More here:

‘Lies!’ GOP senator lashes out after stinging ad hits airwaves in Trump’s backyard
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is firing back after his 2026 primary opponent slammed his record in a new TV ad that aired not in the Lone Star State, but in President Donald Trump’s backyard. The ad, funded by Preserving Texas, a group supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attacks Cornyn over his role in crafting a bipartisan safety bill in 2022,…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lies-gop-senator-lashes-out-after-stinging-ad-hits-airwaves-in-trump-s-backyard/ar-AA1E13WE

CNBC: Man accused of stealing from Homeland Sec. Noem [Bimbo #2] hit with federal charges in three robberies

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  • A man accused of stealing the purse of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a restaurant while she was under Secret Service protection was charged by federal prosecutors with that and two other alleged bag thefts in Washington, D.C., a court filing shows.
  • Mario Bustamente Leiva, is charged with robbery, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection with the three alleged thefts between April 12 and 20.
  • “Following each robbery, Bustamente Leiva made fraudulent purchases using the credit cards obtained from the victim of each robbery,” a U.S. Secret Service agent wrote in the complaint against the Chilean national in U.S. District Court in D.C.

[Mario] Bustamente Leiva, a 49-year-old who prosecutors say is in the country illegally, was arrested Saturday in a D.C. motel.

They finally caught a real alien criminal! Wow! I’m impressed! But it was the Secret Service who nabbed him, not the thugs at ICE.

Man accused of stealing from Homeland Sec. Noem hit with federal charges in three robberies
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was under Secret Service protection when a man walked into a D.C. restaurant and stole her purse from under a table.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-accused-of-stealing-from-homeland-sec-noem-hit-with-federal-charges-in-three-robberies/ar-AA1DNbqF

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Can Trump’s National Security adviser survive Signal scandal?

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Waltz denies texting tie to Jeffrey Goldberg

Now they are trying to lie their way out of it. Rots of ruck with that!

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, wrote that Waltz had connected with him earlier this month on Signal, a commercial messaging app, before being added to a group of national security officials who were convening electronically to discuss imminent strikes on the Houthis, a Yemen-based military movement.

While Goldberg said he had met Waltz in the past, the Trump adviser from Florida denied knowing Goldberg in comments delivered Tuesday at a White House meeting. Waltz said he “never met, don’t know,” and “never communicated with” the journalist, who broke the explosive story of Trump officials communicating about military plans on a non-secure app.

“We are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.

President Donald Trump expressed confidence in Waltz, calling him a good man who “learned a lesson,” and attacked Goldberg as a “sleazebag” who “has made up a lot of stories.”

Meanwhile back at the ranch where everyone is sober:

But a spokesman for the National Security Council already validated the authenticity of the text chain Goldberg published, which included 18 individuals, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and an unnamed active U.S. intelligence officer.

The messages included intelligence operations, a policy debate around the timing of the strikes against the Houthis and operational details, including information on targets, weapons and the sequencing of attacks.

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Can Trump’s National Security adviser survive Signal scandal?
President Trump is standing by his National Security adviser but questions continue to pile up about his communications.

Waltz denies texting tie to Jeffrey Goldberg | Miami Herald

Miami Herald: ‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments

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Anything to get the numbers up, so that Trump & cronies can claim to be doing something!

Federal authorities in South Florida have recently detained at least 18 Cubans during scheduled immigration appointments, local attorneys say, highlighting that a group that has historically enjoyed special immigration benefits is not immune to the Trump administration’s intensified mass deportation efforts.

Among the Cubans recently detained is Beatriz Monteagudo, 25, her friend Johan Ariel told the Miami Herald. The pair texted each other daily. But the last message he received from Monteagudo was March 10. The Cuban woman, who got an I-220A after entering the U.S. in January 2024, was heading to her required check-in appointment in Miramar.

Ariel quickly grew worried that he hadn’t heard from her following the appointment. When he searched the ICE detainee locator service online, her name showed up. Then came Monteagudo’s call.

When she called Ariel from the detention facility, she told him she was with about 18 others who had also been taken into custody after showing up for their routine appointments. Monteagudo told him she wasn’t told why they were there, aside from officers mentioning the laws had changed.

That’s a blatant lie. No laws changed. Trump and ICE are now retaliating again people who have properly complied with the process up to this point. Most of these Cubans crossed the border after they had arranged appointments to do so with immigration officials.

To date, neither Monteagudo nor Ariel have gotten answers, he says. And this week, Monteagudo, who was living in Miami, was transferred to a detention facility in San Diego.

Transferring detainees to remote prisons is a favorite ICE tactic to make it difficult / impossible for family members and attorneys to assist the detainees.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments
Beatriz Monteagudo and Laura de la Caridad Sanchez are two Cuban women detained by ICE after routine appointments in Miramar. More than a dozen others were also possibly detained.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments