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Understand how foreign policy could affect the vote in battleground states. Read more from this series and follow FP’s election news and analysis.

“Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions from all around the world, from Venezuela to the Congo,” Trump said to chants and cheers from the crowd. According to an Axios analysis, the Republican nominee has singled out Venezuelan migrants as “criminals” in more than 64 percent of his speeches over the last year.

“We are an ideal punching bag right now for those who want to criticize migration because we really cannot punch back yet in regards to voting,” said Guillermo Zubillaga, the senior director of public policy programs at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

Many of those who arrived in the United States during the recent wave of Venezuelan migration—including 117,000 people who have entered the country in the last two years under U.S. President Joe Biden’s parole program—cannot participate in this year’s election. But the cohort of Venezuelan Americans who are eligible to vote is only expanding. While there is a lack of robust data, an estimate from the Pew Research Center found that the number of Venezuelan eligible voters in Florida grew by 184 percent between 2008 (26,000) and 2018 (75,000).

In the last two decades, the number of people with Venezuelan origins living in the United States has grown by more than sixfold—making it one of the fastest-growing Hispanic groups in the country. Florida alone is home to about 51 percent of the Venezuelan diaspora in the United States, which numbered more than 545,000 people in 2021, with the highest concentration of Venezuelan Americans living in the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Orange.

Despite growing concerns over Trump’s mass deportation plan and the Biden administration’s decision to not extend legal status for recent Venezuelan migrants, Venezuelan Americans are primarily grading the candidates on two key issues: Venezuela policy and the U.S. economy.

“Diaspora groups and especially Venezuelans tend to be pretty hawkish,” said Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The idea of negotiations with the regime or the idea of lifting sanctions in order to try to negotiate is not something that many of them are likely to favor,” he added, referring to Biden and Harris’s policy toward Venezuela.

Last October, the Biden administration brokered an agreement between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the country’s main opposition groups: In exchange for the United States lifting certain economic sanctions, Maduro would ensure free and fair elections. This carrot approach failed. Maduro cracked down on his political opponents, banned opposition leader María Corina Machado from running for president, and ultimately declared himself the winner of the disputed July 28 election.

Though Harris threw her weight behind Venezuela’s opposition and called for more international pressure for electoral transparency in a personal letter to Machado, many diaspora voters still see her as potentially soft on Maduro.

Adelys Ferro, the co-founder and executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, a grassroots organization in Weston, Florida, said that the community still struggled with trauma after enduring so much for so long. “We want a messiah to come and save us. And we believe that the messiah is going to be a strongman,” she said. “That is our disgrace because that’s not the way that this problem is going to be solved.”

Despite warnings from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy on Venezuela between 2017 and 2019. It imposed harsh sanctions on the country’s oil sector, exacerbating its economic crisis and contributing to the exodus of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans.

“Immigrants don’t just pop out of a vacuum. People need to move to a new location to better their living conditions,” said Andres Fuenmayor, 18, a student at the University of Florida who is eligible to vote for the first time this year. Fuenmayor’s family left Caracas for the United States in 2004, after a decline in the Venezuelan oil sector and the broader economy; he was born and raised in Broward County, Florida.

Still, the Venezuelan diaspora in the United States remains divided over which candidate can deliver a stronger and more stable economy. Thanks in part to misinformation campaigns and Trump’s branding of Harris as a “Marxist“ and “communist,” many Venezuelan Americans see the Democratic candidate as similar to Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

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“Venezuelans have had a negative experience with socialism and price controls. So they embrace the free market and the capacity to start a business,” Zubillaga said.

While Harris has promised to not raise taxes for anyone making less than $400,000 a year, she has proposed eliminating tax cuts for the richest Americans and increasing the capital gains tax rate by 7 percent. Meanwhile, Trump has touted his 2017 tax cuts and pledged to boost oil and gas production in an effort to lower fuel prices.

“I prefer Trump’s economy over Kamala’s, even though I like the sound of her social statements more,” said Lucas, a student at Florida State University, who asked to be identified by only his first name. Lucas’s family came to the United States in 2017 after petitioning for political asylum. “I feel that social statements are something that can be associated with false promises,” he added.

Venezuelan Americans are not alone when it comes to their views on the economy. According to a recent poll by the New York Times and Siena College, 28 percent of Hispanic voters ranked the economy as their top concern and 51 percent said that they trusted Donald Trump to do a better job with it. Those trends are similar to those among the general public.

People wave Venezuelan flags in Miami on Aug. 17. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Immigration might not be a top priority for Venezuelan Americans, but it remains a voter concern—especially for young people, as well as recently naturalized citizens, who are likely to have family members who are still undergoing the asylum process.

“I don’t necessarily feel more optimistic about either party, but I certainly do feel more pessimistic about the Republican Party and their approach to immigration, especially Venezuelan Americans,” Fuenmayor said. In recent weeks, the Trump campaign has also faced backlash over its targeting of Puerto Ricans and Haitian Americans.

Trump leads polls in Florida by an average of 6 percent, but three major national polls indicate that Latino voters across the United States favor Harris. Plus, the state’s Senate race, which is between incumbent Sen. Rick Scott and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, remains relatively tight. According to one survey, Scott has a narrow 3 percent lead over Mucarsel-Powell, but undecided voters might tip that scale.

“I think it is a very difficult time in the United States. Sadly, we fall for polarization and division—even within our own communities,” Ferro said. “The only power that we have to change something is right now with our vote.”