The donation by the state of Florida of prime development land in Miami for Donald Trump’s presidential library has angered critics who say it is a betrayal of the city’s famous Freedom Tower, a beacon of hope for generations of immigrants.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, and his three cabinet colleagues voted unanimously on Tuesday to deed the almost three-acre parcel of land immediately adjacent to the building – also known as El Refugio (the shelter) – to the foundation that will build the library devoted to the legacy of the 45th and 47th president.
During its designation as the Cuban Refugee Center between 1962 and 1974, El Refugio was where hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist revolution were processed into the US.
The tower reopened last month after a multi-year refurbishment as a community hub and exhibition space telling the history of Miami as a welcoming city for immigrants, a story advocates say will now be tarnished by the juxtaposition of a monument to Trump, who has implemented the biggest crackdown on immigration in the nation’s history.
Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, pointed to actions by the Trump administration to expel more than half a million Cuban and other immigrants, including the elimination of a humanitarian parole program that provided protection, and forcibly deporting scores of Cubans in shackles on flights to Havana last month.
“It’s ridiculous they’re putting a library of someone who represents everything that is contrary to freedom, someone who’s making it his mission to destroy immigrant families, next to the Freedom Tower,” she said.
“We know there are a lot of Cubans in detention right now.”
Petit also saw parallels in the donation by DeSantis, who acquired the site a week ago as a secrecy-shrouded gift from the trustees of Miami Dade College (MDC), to the governor’s own anti-immigrant agenda, and his moves to eliminate discussion of race in Florida classrooms.
“There’s been this concerted effort to erase all non-white parts of history,” she said.
“They’ve been erasing the history of Black folks in the state of Florida, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is an effort to erase the piece of history that the Freedom Tower represents, the fact 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’m curious to know who has control, who has jurisdiction over the Freedom Tower, because I wonder if the tower is just going to end up being another Trump hotel.”
Protestors gathered at the site, currently used as a parking lot for MDC’s downtown campus, on Monday. Placards called on MDC trustees to rescind the land giveaway, and another condemned the library project as a “grift that insults a city of immigrants”.
Criticism has also come from MDC’s former president Eduardo Padrón, who assailed college trustees who voted to give DeSantis the land, valued at $67m, for free, with the only condition that construction work must begin within five years.
“It’s very difficult to understand this because the public has not had a chance to even have a say on this,” Padrón told WLRN.
“Its just frankly unimaginable that this decision was made without any real discussion of the consequences of what that will do to the college.”
DeSantis, meanwhile, said the donation was “good for Florida, for the city, and for Miami Dade College”, even though none of those entities would receive any money for it.
The president’s son Eric Trump, one of three trustees of the Donald J Trump Presidential Library Foundation, welcomed the gift in a post to X, claiming it would spawn “the greatest presidential library ever built, honoring the greatest president our nation has ever known”.
In a statement, the foundation said the tower would be “a fitting neighbor” to a Trump library because of its role as a “federal processing center for Cuban refugees fleeing communism, a powerful reminder of America’s role as a refuge from tyranny”.
It said Trump chose the location personally after several other potential sites in Florida were “evaluated” by a team led by his son.
Construction of a presidential library for Trump, who leaves office when his second term expires in January 2029, had already drawn criticism from congressional Democrats. Senators demanded greater transparency in July over its funding after accusing the president of operating it as “a tool for bribery” and soliciting personal gifts.
In May, Trump controversially accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar, which he said would serve as a new Air Force One until ownership transferred to his presidential library foundation when he left office.
Guillermo Grenier, a Cuban-born professor of sociology at Florida International University, said the location of the library was “capturing a moment” in south Florida and reflected an astonishing surge in popularity for the president during the 2024 election that some called the “Trumpification of Miami-Dade”.
“Miami is such a deeply red, very Republican environment. It’s a place, perhaps the only place in the country, where pushback on something like this would be very little. For most communities it would be at least 50-50, but not in this community,” he said.
“The immigration issues that he’s tackling are not without opponents, and in any kind of long-run scenario the Trump legacy is going to be spotty at best, but the library will be presented as an economic development opportunity. Tourism will come, so it so it might be considered more for its historical purposes than for the political value it has today.”
Grenier also noted that, although this will be Florida’s first presidential library, the honoring of Republican, conservative, and rightwing figures is nothing new.
“The geography of Miami is already extremely ideological in its direction,” he said.
“You have a Ronald Reagan Avenue, and a Reagan high school. You have roads named for folks that were in the Bay of Pigs invasion. I mean, there is no Che Guevara Boulevard anywhere.”
