How a migrant influx is causing tensions in one of the most Hispanic cities in the U.S.

Less than a week after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and catching a flight to Florida, Joseliel Montilla, his wife and their five-year-old daughter waited on a cold February morning outside the Department of Children & Families outpost in Hialeah where their family members had taken turns spending the night — not because they had nowhere else to go, but because they wanted to beat the daily rush on the office where new arrivals apply for refugee benefits with the state.

Montilla, originally from the province of Artemisa, says his family fled “misery and persecution in Cuba.” Now, they are making a new home in Hialeah, following in the footsteps of Montilla’s sister, who arrived here two years prior and rented a two-bedroom apartment with her husband on the east side of the city to accommodate their recently arrived relatives from the island.

Amid a historic rush on the border, the family is part of an unquantifiable group of migrants who have recently chosen to settle in this majority-Cuban city of roughly a quarter-million people in northwest Miami-Dade County. But their presence is increasingly becoming a source of division, with Hialeah’s mayor laying blame on new arrivals for some of the city’s problems, including a lack of affordable housing.

Areimy Montilla (second from left) posed with her Cuban migrant family who recently arrived, from left: Yulian Musderien, Ana Laura Montilla, Joseliel Montilla and Tatiana Valdez Roque, as they line up outside of the Hialeah’s Department of Children and Family offices located at 3805 W 20th Ave. on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. The family was looking to receive some benefits after entering the U.S. through the Mexican border amid an influx of migrants coming to Miami-Dade County.

Mayor Esteban Bovo, Jr. has claimed that as many as 80,000 Cubans have arrived in Hialeah over the last two years, stretching the city’s resources. He says it’s a plausible estimate when considering that more than 420,000 migrants have come to the U.S. from Cuba during that time, which he likened to a “Mariel on steroids,” referring to the 1980 mass-flotilla from Cuba to Florida.

“Not all come here. But if you assume that at least 75% of them end up in South Florida, it’s reasonable to assume that half of that ends up here in Hialeah,” Bovo told Herald reporters.

The truth is, no one has been able to say how many migrants have actually come to Hialeah to reunite with relatives and friends or to find familiarity in a new country. Even the mayor acknowledges that he is guessing.

But the presence of newly arrived migrants is reflected in the lines of families at the local Children and Families offices applying for relief; in the trucks full of workers looking for jobs outside local businesses, and in the makeshift shelter of a local church that houses migrants with nowhere else to go.

City officials — who will hold the first of several “immigration workshops” on Monday in an effort to better understand the facts surrounding Hialeah’s migrant influx — are investigating whether a spike in population is leading to an increase in crime, and whether newly arrived Cubans are the cause of a housing crunch that has driven property owners to park campers outside their homes to rent as housing.

“We have lived peacefully for 10 years until my neighbors decided to rent and connect two trailers for the new residents of Hialeah, the migrants,” Tamara Reyes, 52, told the City Council last month. “If this is not controlled, it will be time to move from Hialeah.”

A Unique Struggle

Hialeah’s growing pains aren’t unique in the U.S., where border towns have been overrun and homeowners in places like New York and Chicago have lashed out as migrant shelters pop up in their neighborhoods.

But Hialeah is a city where immigrants and refugees — Cubans, in particular — have built a new future after escaping economic and political oppression. Three-quarters of its residents have roots in Cuba, and 95% of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, making Hialeah one of the cities with the highest concentrations of Hispanic residents in the country. The mayor’s father fought in the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and was a political prisoner.

It is also a Republican stronghold. In November, when former President Donald Trump held a presidential campaign rally down the street from Hialeah City Hall, the crowd cheered when he pledged to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he is once again voted into the White House. Notably, three-quarters of the city’s population was born outside the United States. At the same rally, Bovo announced that the City Council was about to rename the city’s main street after the former president.

Before the city’s affordable-housing task force meeting last month, Bovo opened a press conference by saying that a “total collapse of the southern border” is to blame for an increase in the illegal renting of RVs as housing and the “skyrocketing, literally 100% overnight,” of rents. On Thursday evening, Bovo shared a headline from far-right outlet Breitbart about the high levels of immigration at the southern border on his personal Instagram account, with an image of President Joe Biden and the caption: “This is affecting cities across the country. America is under assault.”

Still, his rhetoric is normally softer than Trump, who has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of America,” and more cautious than that of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has claimed that the migrant crisis “will destroy” his city.

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