Florida’s shift to the right is perhaps nowhere more remarkable than in this vibrant stretch of the state’s southeast coast where the latest Donald Trump drama is set.

Republicans have made steady inroads into this former Democratic stronghold in recent years, culminating in the GOP taking Miami-Dade County into last year’s midterm elections. The broader future of the parties could now depend on what happens next in South Florida, but for a very different reason.

Trump, the former president who is once again the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination, will make his first appearance in federal court in Miami on Tuesday, where he faces 37 felony charges related to charges of illegally holding classified information.

The allegations have propelled Miami to the center of a storyline that until recently was largely thought to be set in a Washington grand jury room. And it has brought to the forefront Trump’s rising popularity among Florida’s Latinos, some of whom have drawn comparisons between the prosecution of the former president and events abroad in which opposition leaders have been arrested or prosecuted in kangaroo courts, despite U.S. tradition of respect for the rule of law and an independent judiciary.

These are the kinds of things you see in the Caribbean and Latin America, where you have the party in power that persecutes the opposition, said Kevin Marino

Cabrera

,

cabreros,

a Miami-Dade County commissioner who is friends with Trump and served as Florida’s state director for his 2020 re-election campaign. What this community sees is injustice being committed.

Miami-Dade is the most populous county in the state and home to 1.5 million Latinos of voting age. Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the county in 2016 by nearly 30 percentage points over Trump. But Trump posted gains in 2020, narrowing the margin to 7 percentage points over Democrat Joe Biden.

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Last year the province turned around, with the Republican governor. Ron DeSantis, who built his brand as a MAGA politician lifted from relative obscurity by Trump, defeated his Democratic opponent by more than 11 points.

The shift was seen last week when, on the day his indictment was unsealed, Trump was golfing with Republican U.S. Representative Carlos

G.

Gimenez, whose precinct covers parts of Miami-Dade. In 2016, the Cuban-born congressman voted in favor

Hillary

Clinton, but he supported Trump in 2020 and even supported efforts to overturn the results of the election in the hours following the January 6 Capitol riot.

On Monday, Trump arrived at his golf resort in Doral, a suburb of Miami, also called Doralzuela because of the large population of Venezuelans. They are one of the groups

in which

the GOP has seen

dramatically important

profits.

There is no equal justice for everyone, said Ernesto Ackerman, a member of the Venezuelan American Republican Club. Trump has been persecuted for six years. They look for excuses to rip him off because they are terrified of him.

As if to stir up that base in Miami, Trump in North Carolina over the weekend reminded voters of his tough stance on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in opposition to the Biden administration’s efforts to ease sanctions against the socialist leader. to relax.

When I left Venezuela was about to collapse, we would have taken over and got all that oil, Trump said at a campaign rally in Greensboro. But now we buy oil from Venezuela, so we make a dictator very rich.

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Trump supporter Hope Quant, a native Nicaraguan, waited outside the Doral golf resort for three hours to show her support for the former president when he arrived Monday. She said Trump’s prosecution reminds her of how the left-wing Sandinista government in her home country went after political opponents.

What are they hiding?

“

It must be something really bad. Hopefully one day we’ll find out, said Quant, citing in part Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Miami is also a hotbed for the far right, raising concerns that protests could spiral out of control

on

Tuesday. At a news conference ahead of Trump’s court appearance, Miami Police Chief Manuel Morales declined to go into details of the security measures, but said he didn’t expect any problems.

On Monday, guards and federal agents were stationed outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson

Jr

Federal Courthouse, a sleek, high-rise glass framed by palm trees. More than a dozen media tents were set up outside to cover the historic case.

Alex Otaola, a Cuban-born YouTube personality running for mayor of Miami-Dade County, is calling on his many followers to protest Trump’s prosecution. Otaola is known for organizing pro-Trump caravans in Miami’s Little Havana and other neighborhoods.

Those of us who believe America’s salvation will only come if Donald Trump is elected to a second term will rally on Tuesday, Otaola said in a YouTube video.

Miami has seen its share of high-profile national security cases before, from the prosecution of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in the 1990s to the trial of US al Qaeda recruit Jose Padilla.

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While Trump will make his first appearance in Miami on Tuesday, the case was filed in West Palm Beach, 70 miles north. It is initially assigned

over there

Unpleasant

Judge Aileen

Cannon, a Trump appointee who was criticized for ruling in his favor during a dispute last year over a special master assigned to review the seized classified documents.

There’s also the question of whether South Florida’s rapidly changing politics could provide some tactical advantages to the former president’s defense. Palm Beach County also turned red in the recent midterm elections.

Former federal prosecutor David Weinstein said Trump may have been called to his first appearance in Miami due to the large media attention and greater federal law enforcement needed to keep the proceedings safe.

While Trump disputes the idea that he enjoys the attention a federal indictment gives him, he often brags about the love he receives from his followers.

Before last year’s midterm elections, Trump held a rally with

US

Senator Marco Rubio in Miami attended by thousands of supporters. They held up signs saying Cubans for Trump, Nicaraguans for Trump, and Venezuelans for Trump.

After Trump called Hispanics great people, the crowd cheered and chanted: We love you! We love you!

Oh, I love you too, Trump said. You have no idea how much.

Associated Press writers Terry Spencer and Gisela Salomon contributed to this report from Miami.