Miami deal for Trump library next to famous Freedom Tower angers critics | Miami

The gift of the state of Florida from Prime Development Land in Miami for the presidential library of Donald Trump has angry the criticisms which say that it is a betrayal of the famous tower of the city, a headlight of hope for generations of immigrants.

Ron Desantis, Republican governor of Florida, and his three colleagues from the cabinet voted unanimously on Tuesday to give in the plot of land of almost three acres immediately adjacent to the building – also known as El Refugio (the refuge) – to the foundation which will strengthen the library dedicated to the inheritance of the 45th and 47th president.

During his designation as a Cuban refugee center between 1962 and 1974, El Refugio was the place where hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing the Communist Revolution of Fidel Castro were transformed in the United States.

The tower reopened last month after a multi -year renovation as a community center and exhibition space telling the story of Miami as a welcoming city for immigrants, according to defenders of history, will now be tarnished by the juxtaposition of a monument to Trump, which has implemented the greatest repression of immigration in the history of the country.

Tessa Petit, executive director of Florida Immigrant Coalition, underlined the actions of the Trump administration to expel more than half a million Cuban immigrants and other immigrants, including the elimination of a humanitarian parole program which ensured protection and forcibly expelled the Cuban scores in chains on flights to Havana last.

“It is ridiculous that they put a library of someone who represents everything that is contrary to freedom, someone who gives his mission to destroy the families of immigrants, alongside the Tower of Liberty,” she said.

“We know that there are many Cubans in detention at the moment.”

Petit also saw parallels in the donation of Desantis, which acquired the site a week ago as a gift of secret from the administrators of the Miami Dade College (MDC), at the Governor’s anti-immigrant agenda, and his movements to eliminate the discussion of the race in the Florida classrooms.

“There was this concerted effort to erase all the non-white parts of history,” she said.

“They erased the history of blacks in the state of Florida, and I would not be surprised if it is an effort to erase the piece of history that the Freedom tower represents, the fact that it represents Florida as a welcoming state.

“You put something like this next to the Freedom Tower with an extended plan to also have a hotel … I am curious to know who has control, who has a jurisdiction on the Freedom Tower, because I wonder if the tower will end up being another Trump hotel.”

The demonstrators gathered on the site, currently used as a parking lot for the Campus in downtown MDC on Monday. Pacards called on MDC administrators to cancel the land gift, and another condemned the library project as a “grade which insults a city of immigrants”.

The criticism also came from the former president of the MDC, Eduardo Padrón, who attacked the university administrators who voted to give Desantis the land, worth $ 67 million, free of charge, with the sole condition that construction works must start in the five years.

“It is very difficult to understand this because the public did not even have the chance to have his say,” Padrón told Wlrn.

“It is frankly unimaginable that this decision was made without any real discussion of the consequences of what it will do in college.”

Desantis, on the other hand, said that the gift was “good for Florida, for the city and for Miami Dade College”, even if none of these entities would receive money for this.

President Eric Trump, one of the three administrators of Donald J Trump Presidential Library Foundation, welcomed the gift in a position to X, saying that he would generate “the largest presidential library ever built, in honor of the greatest president that our nation has ever known”.

In a statement, the Foundation said that the tower would be “an appropriate neighbor” to a Trump library because of its role as a “federal treatment center for Cuban refugees fleeing communism, a powerful reminder of the American role of refuge of tyranny”.

He said Trump had chosen the location personally after several other potential sites in Florida were “assessed” by a team led by his son.

The construction of a presidential library for Trump, who leaves his duties when his second term expires in January 2029, had already criticized the Democrats of the Congress. The senators demanded greater transparency in July for its funding after having accused the president of exploiting it as a “corruption tool” and requested personal gifts.

In May, Trump accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar controversial, which, according to him, would serve as a new Force Air Force until the property was transferred to its foundation on the presidential library when he left his functions.

Guillermo Grenier, professor of sociology of Cuban origin at the International University of Florida, said that the place of the library “captured a moment” in southern Florida and reflected an amazing increase in popularity for the president in the 2024 elections that some called the “Miami-Dade Trumpification”.

“Miami is such a deep red and very republican environment. It is a place, perhaps the only place in the country, where decline on something like it would be very little. For most communities, it would be at least 50-50, but not in this community,” he said.

“The immigration problems he addresses are not without adversaries, and in any type of long -term scenario, the Trump heritage will be at best uneven, but the library will be presented as an opportunity for economic development. Tourism will come, so it could be considered more for its historical ends than for the political value it has today.”

Grenier also noted that, although it is the first presidential library of Florida, the honor of republican, conservative and right personalities is not new.

“Miami’s geography is already extremely ideological in its direction,” he said.

“You have a Ronald Reagan avenue and a Reagan secondary school. You have roads named for people who were in the invasion of pig bay. I mean, there is no boulevard che guevara anywhere. ”