José Javier Rodríguez, the Cuban‑American Democrat seeking to rescue the Florida attorney general’s office from Trumpism

José Javier Rodríguez, the Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, does not want the page turned on the notorious immigrant detention site Alligator Alcatraz, west of Miami, which has become a symbol of the “cruelty” of the Donald Trump administration. If he wins the November election, the 47-year-old Cuban American says he will investigate how Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration established the facility as a “political theater for consumption in Washington.”

“We’re not going to let that be forgotten,” even if the facility closes next month as expected, Rodríguez says in his Coral Gables office, an affluent, Mediterranean‑style city southwest of Miami. He says DeSantis wanted a boost from Trump and used an “absurd” justification to sign an emergency executive order that “seized local government land, bypassed the legislature and grabbed $500 million that was meant for disaster preparedness” to build the facility.

“Cruelty was the point — to attract attention with a cruel project that would show they didn’t care about basic human treatment or the law, that they would do whatever they wanted,” he adds.

His Republican opponent is James Uthmeier, a former chief of staff and head of DeSantis’ presidential campaign, who was appointed attorney general by the governor last year to replace Ashley Moody after she moved to the Senate to take the seat of now‑Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In Florida — a Republican‑run state that has been at the forefront of Trump’s anti‑immigrant offensive — the attorney general’s office has become an extension of the governor’s political arm, Rodríguez says. He aims to reclaim the office as an institutional check that protects the public interest.

A lawyer by trade, Rodríguez served as a state representative from 2012 to 2016. He was later elected state senator (2018–2020) for District 37, which covers part of Miami‑Dade County, and served as deputy labor secretary in the Joe Biden administration. Last week he received endorsements from SAVE, one of the oldest and most influential LGBTQ+ organizations in South Florida, and from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Florida, one of the country’s largest unions. The other Democrat in the race is Jim Lewis, an attorney and former state prosecutor, whom Rodríguez will face in the August primary.

The state attorney general is the chief legal officer of a state and is elected by popular vote independently of the governor. The office legally represents the state government, but it also wields broad powers to investigate corruption cases, sue companies and public agencies, and challenge federal policies in court.

State attorneys general under Trump

Rodríguez’s campaign centers on what role the state attorney general should play under Trump. In recent months, attorneys general in several states have taken leading roles in legal battles against the Trump administration. “Groups of state attorneys general are slowing down Trump’s agenda when it has gone beyond the law,” Rodríguez says, citing as examples deployments of the National Guard to Democratic‑run cities, immigration raids, and attempts to cut food‑stamp benefits (SNAP) without congressional approval. “The attorney general is not the government’s lawyer, but the people’s lawyer,” he sums up.

His campaign directly targets Uthmeier, who has led some of the state’s most aggressive initiatives against immigrants. The attorney general has promoted highly symbolic projects for Trumpism — such as a Trump presidential library in Miami — ordered the removal of LGBTQ+ symbols from public buildings and pressured local officials to expand 287(g) agreements to cooperate with federal immigration agencies. Uthmeier was also one of the main architects and promoters of Alligator Alcatraz.

“What we have is an attorney general who wants to make political theater out of everything, instead of focusing on public safety,” Rodríguez says, adding that many local governments in Florida have been pressured to sign 287(g) agreements. “As attorney general, it’s about enforcing the law, not exercising power. But [in Florida] they’re exercising power. What they want is to create conflict and generate headlines,” he adds.

Rodríguez’s message also reflects an effort by some Cuban American Democrats to offer an alternative to Trumpism without abandoning border‑security rhetoric. While he acknowledges that many voted for tougher border control, he insists that does not justify due‑process violations or indiscriminate attacks on immigrants “who do not pose a danger.”

Trump’s immigration policy has been “terrible,” he says, “a breakdown” that violates basic rights. “Enforcing the law includes ensuring that individuals’ rights and due process are respected. That is the law too,” he says.

On foreign policy, Rodríguez distances himself from both Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba and Trump’s strategy. He says the Democratic administration prioritized economic ties without securing political progress, but argues the current government also lacks a clear plan toward Cuba or Venezuela.

His campaign also focuses on corruption in Tallahassee, the state capital and seat of Florida’s legislature. Rodríguez was one of the politicians affected in 2020 by what became known as the “ghost candidates” scandal, when independent candidates with almost no campaigns were recruited to siphon votes from Democrats in South Florida. Rodríguez lost his Miami‑Dade seat by just 32 votes to Republican Ileana García, while a non‑party candidate — also surnamed Rodríguez — received thousands of votes. Subsequent investigations linked the operation to Republican consultants, and former Republican state senator Frank Artiles was convicted of paying one of the candidates to run. Rodríguez says the incident exemplifies how certain interests operate in the state without real oversight. He also criticizes the closeness between the state government and private companies.

The candidate returns to Alligator Alcatraz, which was erected in just eight days. “It was very obvious they had planned it in secret for months, because it wasn’t possible to sign all those million‑dollar contracts in three days without bidding. At the time I said: ‘In the coming months we will learn that all these contracts are linked to the governor and the attorney general.’ But you didn’t have to wait months — it was days,” he says, referring to reports in the Miami Herald and other outlets that revealed several companies with contracts were linked to DeSantis donors and political allies.

“There’s a lot of corruption. And for a long time Florida hasn’t had an attorney general who actually exercises the office,” he says. “What I’m asking people for is imagination.”

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