Junior Salazar uses protests, boycotts — and seeks dialogue with the other side.
Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: March 7, 2025
Host: His father was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Junior Salazar grew up as the youngest of three siblings, all of them sharing one bed in a one-bedroom rental in Bradenton. But the fact that he was born at Manatee Memorial Hospital 38 years ago made all the difference. Being a U.S. citizen helped him not only to prosper—he got a college degree and has been working in banking and finance most of his adult life—but he has run for office twice. That was for mayor of Bradenton and for state house, and he’s considering more runs. But these days, Salazar has been very busy pushing back against anti-immigrant attitudes and policies, both very publicly and behind the scenes. WSLR News sat down with him for an interview this week.
Junior Salazar.
Johannes Werner: Earlier this year, Junior Salazar joined with a handful of activists and community leaders to start El Pueblo Unido Tampa Bay. In just a few weeks, he managed to raise the immigrant group’s profile by helping with legal services and other hands-on help. But under his leadership, the group also organized pro-immigrant protests in Palmetto, Sarasota, Wimauma and Tampa. Although the Sarasota rally in February was probably the biggest in numbers, the one in Plant City caught most attention. That’s because Salazar staged it during the popular Strawberry Festival, in the middle of a rural area that is a hub for migrant farmworkers and currently a hot spot of ICE enforcement. The handful of protesters drew police presence as well as TV news coverage and at least one statewide news report.
Salazar could be leaning back, keeping himself busy with a banking career and a comfortable private life. He was a two-time president of the Gulf Coast Latin Chamber of Commerce, and he could use his free time to focus his efforts on helping everyone prosper. So why is he putting his body out there for undocumented immigrants now? He says he has to do this because the moment is special.
Junior Salazar addresses a crowd in Sarasota.
Junior Salazar: We’re seeing children afraid to go to school, parents afraid to go to work and people afraid to go to church—the hospitals. Those are things that we hadn’t seen before.
It hurts to see, because I know how hard my father worked to come to this country to give us the life that he did when he was living and how hard my mom has worked even though she’s a born citizen. Seeing that and knowing the struggle that we lived as a family of five, even though me and my sister were all born in America, I can only imagine the trouble—I have friends, I have family, I have colleagues who experience these things every day personally.
JW: Protests are in-your-face events. But one of Salazar’s hallmarks is his eagerness to engage in discussion with total strangers who dislike his views. In Tampa, he even engaged with counter-protesters.
JS: I engaged in language with them to understand. At the end of the day, we may not agree on every single issue, but there may be things about which we can come to an understanding. I may open your eyes, or you may open my eyes, or we may just walk away having had a conversation and just going about it a different way.
Pro-immigrant demonstrators in Tampa.
People have the misconception that protests have to be ugly, that they have to be ruthless—we’re shutting down streets or that we’re going to do things illegally. Yes, we may not ask for a permit, but I think that once you get past that misconception—if you have the opposing side that wants to converse with you about a specific topic—I can only be as great as the people around me. And that includes everybody. Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or you’re an independent, I need to know how you feel, how you think, and why you think the way you think if I’m ever going to, one, run again in my lifetime again for an office. Two, as a human with decency and dignity and respect, I want to understand and have dialogue with you so that—who knows? I may say something that triggers something in your mind that will change the way that your beliefs work.
JW: In the course of organizing “A Day Without Immigrants” last month, Salazar was met with silence by some area retailers that cater to an immigrant clientele. So the former Chamber of Commerce leader reacted by calling on immigrants to boycott these Hispanic-owned stores and restaurants—a move that caused friction. Why would he target local retailers rather than companies that abuse immigrants or outrightly support the Trump administration’s deportation policies?
JS: I felt backlash from both my Latino community and from the non-Latino community, the reason being that the Latino community doesn’t always understand the need to call out Latin business owners when they don’t take a stance on a particular issue or side with the people or speak out and be vocal to support the Latino community. They don’t always understand. They think about it as, “You’re hurting my business. Why are you hurting a Latino business?”
Protesters carried Mexican flags and signs in Sarasota.
It’s not about hurting a Latino business. It’s about garnering attention from someone who impacts our economy greatly. Yes, consumers are great and have a huge impact. But business owners have an even bigger impact. I think that we, oftentimes, as a community, confuse that we’re attacking our own people, but we’re really not. What we’re trying to do is get you out of that comfort zone, because staying quiet does nothing but make you complicit to the oppression that is going on in this country. That’s firmly what we stand on. We want you to be vocal. We want you to make it known. If you support the other side, that’s fine, but make sure you say that. At least be strong enough and courageous enough to say, “Hey, I support this administration.”
JW: Many immigrants lock themselves into their homes these days, minimizing their public presence. Waving signs and chanting slogans on roadsides is the least many would do right now, which explains in part the small numbers during protests in rural areas. So, more behind the scenes, Salazar has created online forums that track ICE and local police action and organize pro-immigrant pushback. In a matter of days, his WhatsApp forums have mushroomed to hundreds of participants who post frequently.
“Proud daughter of immigrants.”
So what is Salazar trying to achieve with the protests and behind-the-scenes organizing? He believes the Trump administration in a few months will have to back off after seeing the backlash from everyday people affected by their policies. And at that moment, there will be an opening to talk immigration reform.
JS: I think that, a year from now—my hope is that we’re in a much better place. My hope is that we can have the dialogue that I’ve been able to have with those that oppose some of my views, some of my beliefs. I want us to be able to come to the table and work and understand why immigrants come to this country and how we can create a better path toward citizenship, because I think the recent announcement of selling citizenship for $5 million—and you get a gold card—
I mean, let’s be realistic. Most people that want to come to this country don’t have the money. That’s why they’re coming to this country: to make a better life for themselves. And they don’t have time to wait on the citizenship process—on the immigration process that is in place. So I hope that, a year from now, we have laid out a pathway towards citizenship that is less flawed than what it is now, because it is time consuming. It does have great cost that many people cannot afford. And people simply don’t have the resources to know about the ways to do things. That’s another big issue: How do we educate people if we want them to come here the correct way? We want them to come here the legal way.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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