I was born in Cuba.
I arrived in the United States as a 6-year-old boy — exiled with my family shortly after the communist takeover of our native homeland.
Only in America can someone arriving as an exile grow up to become a first responder, fire chief, the mayor of one of America’s largest counties, and then later a member of Congress.
I feel blessed and grateful every day my parents made the heart-wrenching decision to leave our native homeland and come to the land of the free and home of the brave.
However, the Biden administration’s actions this past week are making many Cuban-Americans, like myself, feel like we’re back in Havana and not in the country that we’ve made our new home.
One of the best features of America is that the political opposition is safe from political persecution. We are supposed to have a system of checks and balances.
Political prisoners is a phrase that’s only seen in the "world" or "international" sections of newspapers. You’re allowed to criticize, mock and organize through democratic means in this country without fear of legal reprisal.
The indictment of former President Donald Trump marks a departure from this foundational principle.
Donald Trump is not only President Joe Biden’s predecessor, but he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and Biden’s most likely opponent in next year’s presidential election.
Allies of the Biden White House will spin and say that this indictment came from a grand jury, not President Biden, but who empaneled the grand jury?
The Justice Department is controlled by U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee. You have to be either naïve or dishonest to claim that Biden played no role in this indictment.
Furthermore, the facts at the core of the Trump indictment are that he allegedly possessed classified documents.
I expect President Trump’s defense team to make the case that this isn’t a crime. As many legal experts have noted, the Presidential Records Act gives presidents the ability to keep documents — classified or not.
A federal judge ruled in 2012 that White House audio tapes that former President Bill Clinton kept in his sock drawer post presidency aren’t subject to an open records request because they are his personal property.
"The President enjoys unconstrained authority to make decisions regarding the disposal of documents," Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, wrote.
The Presidential Records Act, however, doesn’t apply to senators or vice presidents.
What would certainly be illegal is if a senator who later became a vice president was found to have held unto classified documents. That would be Joe Biden. Joe Biden had top secret documents at this Chinese-funded think tank. Classified documents were also found in his personal garage.
Joe Biden is not allowed to have held onto these documents.
There is a special counsel allegedly investigating this case, Robert Hur. We haven’t heard from him, and people are starting to pick up on his silence.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently wrote, "Has Anyone Seen This Man? Biden Special Counsel Robert Hur Appears to Have Vanished."
There will be no trust left in America’s legal system if Robert Hur continues to be silent and Joe Biden doesn’t face any legal action for what appears to be a clearer infraction than what Donald Trump allegedly committed.
As each day passes, it becomes clearer to me that Donald Trump’s real crime is trying to get back into the White House. If the Biden Justice Department has its way, former President Trump will become a political prisoner and America will no longer resemble the exceptional country I arrived at 63 years ago.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla. serves as the U.S. congressman for Florida's 28th Congressional District. He served as mayor of Miami-Dade County from 2011 to 2020.