Miami Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins credits her historic win this week to a confluence of factors, from various affordability issues to City Hall dysfunction.

She also believes President Donald Trump inadvertently gave her a boost.

In an appearance on “Morning Joe” two days after winning the Miami Mayor’s race by nearly 20 points over a Trump-endorsed opponent, Higgins said fear of the President’s hard-line anti-immigration policies “influenced a lot of people’s vote.”

“There’s this politics of trickle-down hatred, where our immigrant population is not only insulted but also really afraid of the federal government,” she said, using a play on the Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” phrase.

Higgins said she has heard worries from residents across the city that they, their relatives or friends will be swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which received a massive budget increase this year to ramp up detainment and deportation efforts.

“People are afraid,” she said. “I’ve never experienced that in any of my elections before. People want government to work for them. They were never afraid of government, and that’s changed.”

Higgins, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner, said that she and most Americans want a secure border, to know who is entering and exiting the country, and to block criminals from crossing into the country.

That was the policy Trump and his supporters in government sold to the people, she said, but it’s not what the administration has delivered. And with a huge immigrant population across South Florida — the most populous part of a state with an estimated 400,000 holders of temporary protected status at risk — it’s going to severely impact local and state budgets, she said.

“Are we really going to deport 300,000 people and ruin the economy of South Florida? To me, this anti-immigrant fervor, it’s gone too far. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel. I’m Catholic, so I think it’s a sin. And it’s bad for the economy,” she said. “They’re going after everybody, rich and poor, and it’s really changing how people think about who they want to speak up for and stick up for them in local government.”

Higgins made clear that she believed the two primary drivers in the city’s election this year were the increasingly unaffordable cost of housing and Miami’s “long history of corruption” — a reference, perhaps, to the legal travails of outgoing Commissioner Joe Carollo, numerous police scandals or inquiries into alleged malfeasance by outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez, ex-Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and former City Attorney Victoria Méndez that, to date, have resulted in no official findings of wrongdoing.

As she did on the campaign trail, Higgins touted her work toward “building thousands of units of affordable housing.” She said housing affordability — inclusive of home prices, rent and property insurance — was her “top issue” leading up to Election Day.

But businesses are feeling the crunch too, she added.

“Our housing affordability crisis has existed for some time,” she said.

“You also have what’s going on with this tariff issue, which is raising prices at the grocery store, at the drug store and for small businesses. We forget about that. You can go into a hair salon (where) the price of extensions (has) gone up by $20. And do they cut their profits or do they charge their customers in Little Havana $20 more? Neither of those people can afford that. So, affordability is all over the map.”

Eileen Higgins defeated former City Manager Emilio González Tuesday to become Miami’s first woman Mayor and the first registered Democrat to win the job in nearly 30 years. She won with 59.5% of the vote.

Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris won Miami by less than a percentage point. Three years earlier, Suarez, a Republican, won re-election with 79% of the vote.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is supporting a plan that boots the University of South Florida from its Sarasota-Manatee campus and shifts every building, dorm and facility to New College of Florida, which would mark a dramatic reshaping of Sarasota’s higher education landscape.

The measure, pitched as part of the Governor’s 2026-27 budget proposal, would create a new section of Florida law directing the two institutions to shift all real property, buildings, leaseholds and related liabilities associated with the Sarasota-Manatee campus from USF to New College.

The conforming bill specifies that no students, employees, fund balances, research contracts or grants would be part of the transfer, which applies only to real estate, fixed capital facilities, certain furnishings and any outstanding debts tied to those facilities. It would also guarantee that current USF Sarasota-Manatee students can continue finishing their degrees for up to four more years.

If approved, New College would be required to assume full legal and financial liability for the campus’s outstanding facility debt no later than Oct. 30, 2026. Until that assumption is complete, New College would make monthly payments of $166,617 to USF to cover the debt service. Failure by New College to make those payments would void the transfer and return the facilities to USF.

The real property transfer would need to be completed by July 1, 2026, with specific assets and liabilities identified in a joint agreement approved by both schools’ Boards of Trustees and submitted to the Board of Governors.

The bill includes guiding principles for determining what moves to New College and what remains with USF. Permanently affixed buildings and general classroom furnishings would transfer, while movable equipment, intellectual property, computers assigned to USF personnel, fund balances and items of historical significance to USF would remain with USF.

The bill also requires that existing residential contracts on the Sarasota-Manatee campus be honored by New College through at least Aug. 15, 2027. If the two universities disagree on any aspect of the transfer, the Board of Governors must resolve outstanding issues by Sept. 30, 2026.

The measure includes teach-out protections for USF students who enrolled before the bill takes effect. Those students must receive priority access to classroom and support space in the transferred facilities for up to four academic years to allow them to complete their degrees locally. New College would be required to make that space available to USF free of charge. USF would also be barred from assigning newly admitted students to the Sarasota-Manatee campus as their home campus going forward.

The bill provides civil immunity to both institutions, and their Trustees and employees, for actions taken to comply with the act.

Representatives from New College of Florida and University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee did not immediately return requests for comment.