Ana María Polo is a Cuban-American lawyer. And, for nearly 20 years, she reached hundreds of thousands of Hispanic households from her courtroom set on the popular Telemundo program Caso Cerrado (“Case Closed”).
Polo says that the United States — the country to which she emigrated as a child and where she has lived for most of her life — no longer feels like home. “Right now, it’s difficult to be Latino in the United States and not feel discriminated against,” she affirms. “The divisions in the country are very serious, very ugly.”
The lawyer and television personality, who spoke to EL PAÍS by phone, describes a grim picture of U.S. politics under the second Donald Trump administration, pointing to the deep divisions in the country, as well as the rolling back of rights and laws. She expresses her concerns about the balance of power and the treatment of immigrants and the Latino community. “There is clear, overwhelming discrimination focused on Latinos,” she maintains.
“There are many [immigrants] who abide by the law and have been mistreated and racially profiled… and that’s not right. This country was built on immigrants,” she emphasizes. In addition to criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policy, Polo asserts that she doesn’t understand “how all these Cuban-American senators and congressmen are supporting this administration.” She’s referring to the legislators from South Florida. Polo arrived in the state more than 60 years ago and still lives there.
Born in Havana in 1959, Polo immigrated to Miami when she was two years old. She then lived in Puerto Rico until the mid-1970s, although she eventually returned to Miami, where she studied law. She then began shooting her successful courtroom drama.
Caso Cerrado, which ran for more than 2,000 episodes between 2001 and 2019, when Polo’s contract with Telemundo ended, garnered large audiences in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. The show has been translated into several languages and is still broadcast on television and streaming platforms. The character of Dr. Polo — with her gavel and her unmistakable catchphrase, “I said, case closed!” — transcended the screen and left a mark on popular Hispanic culture.
Since the show ended, Polo has made several attempts to return to the screen. In 2019, she said she was planning to shoot a film about Caso Cerrado… but after several tentative release dates, it hasn’t materialized. She says the project is “still in progress” with a Chilean production company, but claims she didn’t like the script and that it’s currently being reviewed. And, in 2022, she announced that she would remake Caso Cerrado at a studio in Doral, north of Miami, with the production company Mega Global Entertainment. However, this project also fell through.
Now, at the age of 66, Polo says that she’s taking a well-deserved break after “working like a horse.” She dedicates her days to gardening, the sea, traveling and watching television. She also works to raise awareness about breast cancer among Hispanics. A cancer survivor, Polo was diagnosed in 2003 and underwent a radical mastectomy on her right breast. She acknowledges that she bears extensive scars, but notes that she’s “alive and healthy.” This is thanks, in large part, to the early detection of the disease.
The lawyer accepts that there will always be someone offering to bring back Caso Cerrado.
Still, Polo makes it clear that she’s no longer the same person she was before. “You get older… and I don’t feel like going to get Botox and fillers. You reach a point where you say, ‘This is me.’ And what counts is your mind, your spirit, not your appearance. But on television, we’re always all so lively.”
She also doesn’t believe that the United States has “a good environment” for programs like Caso Cerrado. “I don’t want to end up like Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert. I want to be able to do a show where freedom of expression is truly respected, not chopped up,” she sighs, referring to the two comedians whose shows were suspended under pressure from the Trump administration.
Polo compares the current “ideological extremism” in the country to McCarthyism. She expresses her concern about the church’s alliance with the government. “Governments aren’t supposed to impose ideologies or religious dogmas on us, like the idea that abortion is a sin. We’re not in a position to judge a woman whose health may depend on an abortion, or [enforce] these Christian concepts that women are only around to give birth and obey men,” she says.
Her criticism doesn’t end there: she’s also concerned that the balance between the judicial, executive and legislative branches mandated by the Constitution “is being lost” under Trump. She says the Supreme Court “does everything” the president requests and that the judges are overturning rights that American society fought so hard for. Polo, who in 2014 campaigned for marriage equality, asserts that “when the right case arises, they’ll [also] take this away.”
In 2020, Polo was a spokesperson for When We All Vote, the nonpartisan organization founded by Michelle Obama. She tells EL PAÍS that she’ll be active in the upcoming elections, “because the vote remains our most powerful weapon.”
Polo has received numerous awards, including the Mickey Leland Award for her humanitarian commitment. And, since 2021, the street where Caso Cerrado was filmed — in the city of Hialeah, north of Miami — bears her name.
In addition to keeping up with her more than 30 million followers on social media, she says she’s “very connected” to the people in Miami. Whenever she goes out, someone always comes up to her, gives her a kiss on the cheek and shares a story. “That makes me really happy. I tell myself, ‘Damn, you did a good job. You gave something nice [to others]… and you get something nice back.’”
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