Our Friday Sociedad Media Now newsletter NUEVO MIAMI focusing on the latest news stories impacting Miami’s Latino community from the city of Miami.
Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan Diaspora Answers the Call: A Countywide Relief Drive, From Doral Warehouse to Caracas Tarmac
MIAMI — While Washington debates a preliminary plan to help administer Venezuela’s earthquake reconstruction, Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan community has already delivered its own response — a countywide donation drive led by Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez and Global Empowerment Mission that shipped 50 tons of aid to Caracas via a LATAM Cargo humanitarian flight.
Drawing in partners like CBS Miami and Neighbors 4 Neighbors and eleven drop-off locations across the county, the effort reflects the deep ties of a metro area home to roughly 124,000 Venezuelan residents, many with family directly affected by the June 24 earthquakes — even as those same families separately push Washington for extended immigration protections, underscoring how the crisis is simultaneously a humanitarian emergency abroad and a matter of legal security at home.
Miami-Dade’s Quiet Enforcement Campaign: Revoking Business Licenses Over Cuba Trade
MIAMI — Since October 2025, Miami-Dade County Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez has run a quiet, ongoing enforcement campaign revoking the operating licenses of businesses found doing unauthorized commerce with Cuba, using the county’s Local Business Tax Receipt authority as a local extension of the federal embargo.
What began with 75 warning letters and 20 initial revocations by December has continued into 2026 with actions against a Hialeah-Homestead-Miami travel agency, a Doral logistics firm, an energy company tied to Cuba’s state oil monopoly CUPET, and a shipping operation caught hauling cement to the port of Mariel.
Fernandez, a Cuban emigrant himself, has framed the effort as a matter of rule of law and protecting honest businesses, reflecting Miami-Dade’s identity as a hub for the Cuban exile community even as it operates independently of federal enforcement action.
