Marco Rubio urges patience in Florida’s Venezuelan diaspora as nation rebuilds after Nicolás Maduro

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he hopes Venezuelans exiled and living in Florida can return home soon.

“For the first time in over a decade and a half, there is the real possibility of transformation, and a lot of it will depend on them,” Rubio said at a Senate hearing. “There are many people living in Florida and across the country who would like to go back and be a part of Venezuelan economic life. Many of them are eager to do so, and they’re going to need them.”

The Miami Republican spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee more than three weeks after the U.S. arrested and deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The sometimes tense hearing included significant discussion of the impact on Venezuelan Americans currently in the U.S. The Migration Policy Institute says 49% of all Venezuelans in America currently live in Florida, most in South Florida. That’s a community Rubio knows well from his tenure over three terms representing Florida in the Senate.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a Naples Republican, said the operation to remove Maduro was especially popular in Florida. “The Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, basically, in Latin America, a lot of them are in Miami,” Scott said, “because they’ve had to leave these countries because of socialism and lack of opportunity.”

But Rubio also urged patience within the diaspora.

“I remind everybody, on Friday, we’ll mark the four weeks since this happened,” Rubio said of Maduro’s arrest. “I get it. We all want something immediately, but this is not a frozen dinner you put in a microwave and in two and a half minutes it comes out ready to eat. These are complex things.”

Rubio notably supported temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans during his tenure in the Senate, including during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. But he defended Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoking that status last year. Rubio said that was a matter of metrics and an explosion in TPS use under former President Joe Biden.

“The problem with temporary protected status was it was granted to so many people in such vast numbers, so quickly, without proper vetting by the previous administration,” Rubio said. “There’s a real concern that there were gang members that had received TPS simply because of the nation they came from, and the time in which they came. It became so big and so massive.”

Rubio said the vast majority of Venezuelans in the U.S. were not affiliated with Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang now designated as a foreign terrorist organization. But he said many members were embedded within the TPS system.

“The administration felt it had canceled the program in order to appropriately vet it,” Rubio said.

During the hearing, Rubio said he wanted to focus on Venezuela’s future, particularly rebuilding and transitioning to free and fair elections accessible to all candidates.

Democrats questioned why the administration left in place Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice President, as the nation’s interim President.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, criticized statements by Trump inferring opposition leader María Corina Machado lacked respect in Venezuela, while pressing Rubio to confirm that Maduro and Rodriguez did not legitimately win re-election in the last election there.

Rubio said the entire world agrees Maduro lost his last election to Edmundo González, a leader now exiled in Spain. He also said he personally holds deep respect for Machado, whom he has known for a dozen years.

“This is not a campaign to leave in place the system that’s currently in place,” Rubio said.

But he suggested even Machado would acknowledge that a dangerous regime still controls institutions of power and violence in Venezuela. As for why that situation remains, Rubio said it was important that the operation to remove Maduro did not completely destabilize society in the nation.

“Some people are saying we don’t want regime change. On the other hand, we’re being criticized for not undertaking regime change,” Rubio said. “What we’re trying to trigger here is a process of stabilization, recovery and transition to something where Maria Corina and others can be a part of (elections).”