Republican claims he’s always been ‘warning’ Trump about ICE

Republican Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida

Republican Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida is claiming he had warned his MAGA overlords about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s inhumane tactics.  

“Unfortunately, you know, we've been warning the administration about the enforcement that's been going on,” Giménez told Fox Business on Monday. “We thought that there should have been a course correction a long time ago, and now I guess it's going to be forced on us by the Democrats.”

GOP Rep. Gimenez: "We've been warning the administration about the enforcement that's been going on. We thought there should've been a course correction a long time ago, and now I guess it's gonna be forced on us by the Democrats. We should've been focusing on criminals and gang… pic.twitter.com/HAK7B6SmNr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026

Now that immigration has become an albatross around the GOP’s electoral aspirations, Giménez has executed an abrupt about-face, recasting himself as a reasonable conservative. But he wasn’t always so prescient.

Waaaaaaaay back a few months ago, he told C-SPAN that not only did he support the Trump administration’s invasion of Los Angeles over the objections of state and local officials, but also he supported it for the same reasons the administration has given to justify its brutality in Minneapolis.

“If the local folks, if the state folks, you know, can’t protect the people of Los Angeles and their property, then, you know, the federal government has a right to do that,” Giménez said during an interview last June, when asked about the thousands of troops Trump was deploying to terrorize the city.

In the face of an immigration policy that has led to federal agents egregiously killing two Americans, Republicans are either choosing to run and hide, or like Giménez, to pretend this was never their policy at all.

Of course, not everyone is buying the new line Giménez is selling:

Early last year I approached Rep Gimenez with an offer to work together to protect immigrants in his district & mine. He rudely told me he had his own strategy & walked off.

Apparently his strategy was to do nothing for over a year to actually stop this.

Miami deserves better. https://t.co/ytsUKa9DuI

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) February 2, 2026