In chaotic, shameful scene, Miami-Dade commissioners watch public speaker dragged out
The chaotic scene that broke out Thursday at the Miami-Dade commission meeting should concern everyone who still believes in open government.
A local resident identified as Camila Ramos, 36, was forcibly dragged from the meeting by Miami-Dade sheriff's deputies after attempting to ask a question about the immigration enforcement agreement between Miami-Dade and ICE, a volatile topic, especially in South Florida.
It was a shocking moment: scuffles, pleas to be allowed to speak, the crowd chanting 'Let her speak' as Ramos was dragged along the floor of the chamber and out the door by multiple law enforcement officers. Many members of the public held up their phones to video the appalling spectacle.
It's also a flashing red warning light. Miami-Dade and other Florida elected officials are acting increasingly inaccessible. Public input, which should be at the heart of our government, seems to be eyed with increasing suspicion or outright hostility.
Ramos wasn't threatening anyone. Yes, she was an opponent of the agreement. But she merely asked a question about her right to speak after Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez said he would end future public comment if anyone spoke. How does that warrant dragging her out of the room?
'I just asked a question!' Ramos pleaded, as she was grabbed and hustled out.
'I have a right to understand this process,' she pleaded. She's right. We'd like to understand it, too.
Some commissioners wanted the speakers to be heard. Others explained that the agreement with ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — wasn't on the agenda, or at least they didn't think so. The confusion helped increase the temperature in the room.
But clamping down on public speech with violence is a serious and dangerous thing to do. It wasn't just Ramos being taken from that room — it was the public's right to participate.
Thursday's episode is part of a broader and deeply troubling pattern: Politicians in Miami and in Florida seem to be making it harder for constituents to come in front of them to be heard. Public town halls and open forums are dwindling. Comment times in public meetings are short. The shift reflects a fear of confrontation — but in dodging conflict, our leaders are also dodging accountability.
We've seen Miami city commissioners sit through public hearings with little interest in what is being said by the public. The hearings usually end with a vote where elected officials do exactly what they were going to do before the public spoke. Public comments are treated as little more than a show — and constituents know it.
What happened Thursday wasn't just a breakdown in communication. It was a silencing of debate. The commission had already moved to defer a vote on a new ICE jail agreement, a cooperation agreement that Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had signed. (It is now mandated by state law.)
Rodriguez told those who signed up to speak on the topic that they could — but this time only. If the matter ever returned for a vote, Rodriguez said there would be no further public comment. That's confusing — none at all, ever? — and seems strangely punitive. Ramos was, understandably, seeking clarification. And that's when she was dragged out.
The item on the agenda Thursday was a modification of county-ICE agreement that included reimbursement provisions for inmates held at Miami-Dade jails when they are sought for deportation.
The agreement raises concerns about due process, public records and the potential for people to disappear into an immigration abyss. Yet instead of listening, the Miami-Dade commission met simple questioning with brute authority. And we didn't see or hear anyone from the dais calling for calmer heads to prevail.
For the average citizen, standing at a microphone during public comment may be their only shot at being heard. But, on Thursday, that right was denied and punished.
The Miami-Dade commission may think it enforced its control on the chamber, but what it really did was show the public just how far removed it has become from the people it claims to serve.
Click here to send the letter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Senate Unveils New Trump Tax Draft With Plans to Vote Soon
(Bloomberg) -- Senate Republicans unveiled a new version of their $4.2 trillion tax cut package, moving closer to a vote as they near a July 4 deadline set by President Donald Trump. Philadelphia Transit System Votes to Cut Service by 45%, Hike Fares US Renters Face Storm of Rising Costs Squeezed by Crowds, the Roads of Central Park Are Being Reimagined Sprawl Is Still Not the Answer Mapping the Architectural History of New York's Chinatown The new draft reflects compromises among warring factions of the Senate GOP which has been divided over how much to cut safety-net programs such as Medicaid and how rapidly to phase out of renewable energy tax credits enacted under the Biden administration. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he plans for his chamber to start voting on the tax bill Saturday with final votes coming as soon as early Sunday. Party leaders plan to bring House members back to Washington early next week for what they hope will be final approval of the measure in time for Trump's Independence Day deadline. It is not yet clear if the 50 Senate Republicans needed to pass the bill are all on board. The bill can be further altered on the Senate floor to secure the votes if needed. The House could make more changes if Speaker Mike Johnson has trouble corralling votes for the measure. SALT Deduction A tentative deal with House Republicans to increase the state and local tax deduction is included. The bill would raise the SALT deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years before snapping back to the $10,000 level. The new cap applies to 2025 and rises 1% in subsequent years. The ability to claim the full SALT amount would phase out for those making more than $500,000 per year. A House attempt to curb the ability of pass-though businesses to circumvent the SALT cap is removed from the text. The deal has the support of most members of the House SALT caucus of Republicans from high-tax swing districts. While decried by conservatives for costing hundreds of billions of dollars, it has the blessing of the White House. Senate Republicans also deleted a Section 899 'revenge tax' on some foreign companies and investors that had spooked Wall Street, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent requested the change. The Senate measure makes permanent individual and business tax breaks enacted in 2017, while adding temporary new breaks for tipped and overtime workers, seniors and car-buyers. Medicaid Changes To win over moderate Republicans, the bill would create a new $25 billion rural hospital fund aimed at helping mitigate the impact of Medicaid cuts, which otherwise could force some rural providers to shut down. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, however, had demanded a $100 billion fund. Moderate Republicans also won a delay from 2031 to 2032 on the full impact of a new 3.5% cap on state Medicaid provider taxes. States often use these taxes, within some already existing rules, to draw down federal funding and increase payments to facilities like hospitals. Limits on the Medicaid funding mechanism would begin phasing in in 2028. The cap on provider taxes would only apply to states that expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income people under the Affordable Care Act. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 40 states and the District of Columbia have done so. The House-passed version of the bill proposed a moratorium on new or increased provider taxes, which the Congressional Budget Office said would save the federal government more than $89 billion over the next decade. The measure also would impose new work requirements on Medicaid recipients and require Medicaid beneficiaries who gained eligibility through the Affordable Care Act to pay a share of their costs through charges such as co-pays and deductibles. Renewable Energy Senate Republicans moved up a cut-off tax credits used for wind and solar projects even earlier then they initially proposed, amid pushback on the credits from Trump. The new measure requires those projects to be 'placed in service' by the end 2027 to receive the incentives, as opposed to simply under construction. The change, if it makes into law, could be a blow to companies such as NextEra Energy Inc., the biggest US developer of wind and solar projects. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned Americans in a social media post that Republicans' plan to phase out the clean energy tax breaks would 'jack up your electric bills and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs.' Republicans also would end a popular $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles earlier than in the prior drafts. While the initial proposal would have ended the incentive at the end of this year for most EV sales, the new version terminates the credit after September 30, 2025. Tax credits for the purchase of used and commercial electric vehicles would end at the same time. The new draft adds back in a plan to sell as much as 1.2 million acres of Interior Department land for housing and 'community development' across 11 western states. The measure, championed by Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican could raise as much as $6 billion. But it has drawn opposition from some Republican senators representing affected states, who have vowed to strike it from the bill. The phase-out of a tax credit for hydrogen production would be delayed to cover projects that begin construction through 2028. The previous version of the legislation ended the credit this year. The bill would slash funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cut federal payments to states for food stamps and boost funds for a US-Mexico border wall among other things. The measure would avert a US payment default as soon as August by raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. --With assistance from Mike Dorning. (Updates with additional details throughout.) America's Top Consumer-Sentiment Economist Is Worried How to Steal a House Inside Gap's Last-Ditch, Tariff-Addled Turnaround Push Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags Apple Test-Drives Big-Screen Movie Strategy With F1 ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates: Senate Republicans Seek to Pass Sprawling Domestic Policy Bill
The Trump administration said on Friday that it was terminating long-running deportation protections for Haitians in the United States, declaring that the violence-plagued Caribbean nation was now safe enough for the program to end by September. The announcement, by the Department of Homeland Security, continues the administration's campaign of revoking special protections afforded to migrants from some of the most unstable and desperate places in the world. Hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who had previously been authorized to remain in the country, including Afghans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, could face deportation. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, had foreshadowed that Haiti would be on the list, signing a decision in February revoking an extension of the protection, called Temporary Protected Status, for hundreds of thousands of Haitians. The publication of a notice in the federal register, dated Friday, set the plan in action and underscored the threat of deportation for more than 300,000 Haitians who have been protected under the program. The department said the program would expire on Sept. 2, although the administration's plan may face challenges in court. The Obama administration first granted the immigration status to Haitians in the United States in 2010, after a catastrophic earthquake rocked the island nation. The program has been repeatedly extended in the years since; an attempt in 2019 by the first Trump administration to end it was blocked by legal challenges. Republicans have argued that the protections for migrants from unstable places have strayed far from their original mission of providing temporary shelter from conflict or disaster. In its statement on Friday, the department said the termination of the program for Haitians 'restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary.' Immigrants' advocates scoffed at the justification the department offered in its statement: The 'environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.' Haiti is an impoverished country that has been under a state of emergency since last year after its collapse into criminal anarchy. It is overrun by gangs and wracked with corruption. The State Department places Haiti at the highest threat level in its travel advisory database, citing widespread violent crime and advising Americans not to visit. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights group, said on social media: 'This is NOT a safe place to send people. It's a death sentence.' The Department of Homeland Security said Haitians could pursue legal status through other routes. Setareh Ghandehari, an advocacy director at the immigrant rights group Detention Watch Network, said it was 'a slap in the face to tell people who currently have legal status' to pursue another form of legal status. 'Those options are almost nonexistent,' she added. Guerline Jozef, the executive director of the advocacy group the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said the news had left Haitians in the United States shocked. 'This announcement has created mass fear,' she said. The Department of Homeland Security urged Haitians to use a Customs and Border Protection mobile application, called CBP Home, to help arrange their voluntary deportation. The public notice released by the department also cited a sharp increase in recent years in the number of Haitians trying to enter the United States. Since returning to office on a pledge to conduct the largest deportation program in U.S. history, President Trump has paused a program granting legal status to some Ukrainians who fled after Russia's invasion and revoked protections for Afghan citizens who supported the U.S. war effort in their home country. He also ended a Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization if they passed security checks and had a financial sponsor. More than 500,000 migrants entered the United States through that initiative. During his campaign for president last year, Mr. Trump focused heavily on threats that he said some Haitians in the United States posed to communities. In a debate in September, he baselessly claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had taken and eaten their neighbors' dogs and cats. The outlandish claim caused a national stir and pushed officials in Springfield, which has had an influx of Haitian immigrants, to say that there were no credible reports that immigrants had harmed any pets in the city.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Report: Voter confidence in election systems high, but more education needed
Getty Images Voters in Michigan had a high opinion of the 2024 election being accurate, fair and secure, both before and after the election took place, and appear to have the same confidence in the upcoming 2026 election, according to a new poll that was hailed Thursday by a partisan group. Poll findings released this week from Glengarrif Group showed that eight in 10 voters – from a sample size of 800 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.5% – felt that the upcoming election to select the three top heads of state; governor, attorney general and secretary of state, would be equally secure and fair. The results of the poll, which was conducted during the first week of June, were released in conjunction with an event on Thursday at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. The panel featured members of the Democracy Defense Project, including two former Michigan governors, a former congressman and others. Glengarrif Group noted that nearly 76% of Michigan voters said the November 2024 election was fair, and that 88% of voters said they trusted their local elections, which is a 10-percentage point increase from those who answered a related poll in October 2024. That said, nearly 57% of voters who engaged with the poll said they were at least somewhat concerned about noncitizens voting in state elections, with nearly 36% also saying they were very concerned about that issue. Only 21% of respondents, however, said voters should show an ID to vote, which is already required by Michigan law, and a slim 7.7% said voters should show proof of citizenship. That polling on some voters' feelings on citizenship as a prerequisite to vote serves as a counterpoint to Michigan Republican efforts to get a constitutional amendment requiring proof of citizenship in order to cast a ballot. The lead sponsor of that movement is state Rep. Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford), who told Michigan Advance in late May that he believed 85% of the state's population agreed that only U.S. citizens should vote in statewide and national elections. That said, Posthumus' aim was to put that question before the voters in 2026, giving the voting populace a chance to say whether they believed only U.S. citizens should vote in Michigan's elections. It is still an open question if a large enough group of Michigan voters want to make that a constitutional requirement. At Thursday's forum to announce the poll findings, former Democratic Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard said the state's residents should be proud of the professionalism of local election workers, regardless of the political outcome. 'As with any election, people will have strong feelings about the outcome and the winners,' Blanchard said. 'One thing our poll clearly shows is that despite those feelings, Michigan voters are confident in our election system, especially the work of our local and county-level officials and the many hardworking volunteers who provide support at precincts in communities across Michigan.' Former Republican Michigan Gov. John Engler also said that the state's voters appear overwhelmingly satisfied with existing election processes. Engler went on to say that more education was needed to bring them up to speed on what measures are already in place to ensure secure and safe elections. 'In the past few years, we have seen clerks from both parties actively engaging voters from all backgrounds in their communities – Republicans, Democrats and independents,' Engler said. 'At the same time, local media outlets have covered these events and supported civic public education that benefits all of us, and we encourage them to build on these efforts.' Engler's comments come at a time when some Republican state lawmakers remain committed to pushing the falsehood that the 2020 and 2022 elections were unfair and are working to relitigate the outcome of those elections despite recent polls like the Glengarrif offering and other assurances through the years. Former Lt. Gov. John Cherry, a Democrat, said the Glengarrif poll was striking because it was the first time polling has been done where a majority of voters from all backgrounds said they were satisfied with the 2024 results and looked confidently ahead to 2026 – all while acknowledging that existing safeguards were working. 'Where voters say they want to see changes, that list is very narrow,' Cherry said. 'We believe that by working together, in a bipartisan way, Michigan policymakers can find reasonable, commonsense and cost-effective ways to address voters' concerns.' Former Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop of Rochester said the poll was evidence that voters of all political leanings wanted to be in the driver's seat for local, state and national elections, and not politicians in Lansing. That said, Bishop did say he believed that the proof of citizenship responses in an open-ended portion of the poll shows there is an appetite to move that measure across the finish line. 'Voters also have a real desire to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in our elections, and we encourage policymakers to explore solutions that keep our elections secure without putting up barriers that may prevent any eligible voter from exercising their right to vote,' Bishop said. Board members of the Democracy Defense Project proposed a solution to that conundrum: expand and support voter access to Michigan Enhanced IDs and driver's licenses. Both forms of enhanced identification indicate if someone is a U.S. citizen and are compliant with new federal requirements for REAL ID, which allow access to federal buildings, boarding planes and traveling domestically by air and other activities. In late May, the Michigan Department of State said it had issued 200,000 REAL IDs in the last few months. A REAL ID differs from Enhanced ID in that it does not indicate U.S. citizenship, so a pathway to getting the latter could ease citizenship and voting concerns.
