{"id":235550,"date":"2025-10-19T04:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/235550\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T04:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:47:09","slug":"ana-maria-polo-right-now-its-hard-to-be-latino-in-the-united-states-and-not-feel-discriminated-against-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/235550\/","title":{"rendered":"Ana Mar\u00eda Polo: \u2018Right now, it\u2019s hard to be Latino in the United States and not feel discriminated against\u2019 | U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ana Mar\u00eda 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<\/a> program Caso Cerrado (\u201cCase Closed\u201d). <\/p>\n

Polo says that the United States \u2014 the country to which she emigrated as a child and where she has lived for most of her life \u2014 no longer feels like home. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s difficult to be Latino in the United States and not feel discriminated against,\u201d she affirms. \u201cThe divisions in the country are very serious, very ugly.\u201d <\/p>\n

The lawyer and television personality, who spoke to EL PA\u00cdS by phone, describes a grim picture of U.S. politics under the second Donald Trump administration<\/a>, 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. \u201cThere is clear, overwhelming discrimination focused on Latinos,\u201d she maintains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many [immigrants] who abide by the law and have been mistreated and racially profiled\u2026 and that\u2019s not right. This country was built on immigrants,\u201d she emphasizes. In addition to criticizing the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policy, Polo asserts that she doesn\u2019t understand \u201chow all these Cuban-American senators and congressmen<\/a> are supporting this administration.\u201d She\u2019s referring to the legislators from South Florida. Polo arrived in the state more than 60 years ago and still lives there. <\/p>\n

Born in Havana in 1959, Polo immigrated to Miami when she was two years old. She then lived in Puerto Rico<\/a> until the mid-1970s, although she eventually returned to Miami, where she studied law. She then began shooting her successful courtroom drama. <\/p>\n

Caso Cerrado, which ran for more than 2,000 episodes between 2001 and 2019, when Polo\u2019s 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 \u2014 with her gavel and her unmistakable catchphrase, \u201cI said, case closed!\u201d \u2014 transcended the screen and left a mark on popular Hispanic culture.<\/p>\n

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\u2026 but after several tentative release dates, it hasn\u2019t materialized. She says the project is \u201cstill in progress\u201d with a Chilean production company, but claims she didn\u2019t like the script and that it\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

Now, at the age of 66, Polo says that she\u2019s taking a well-deserved break after \u201cworking like a horse.\u201d She dedicates her days to gardening, the sea, traveling and watching television. She also works to raise awareness about breast cancer among Hispanics<\/a>. 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\u2019s \u201calive and healthy.\u201d This is thanks, in large part, to the early detection of the disease.<\/p>\n

The lawyer accepts that there will always be someone offering to bring back Caso Cerrado. <\/p>\n

Still, Polo makes it clear that she\u2019s no longer the same person she was before. \u201cYou get older\u2026 and I don\u2019t feel like going to get Botox and fillers<\/a>. You reach a point where you say, \u2018This is me.\u2019 And what counts is your mind, your spirit, not your appearance. But on television, we\u2019re always all so lively.\u201d <\/p>\n

She also doesn\u2019t believe that the United States has \u201ca good environment\u201d for programs like Caso Cerrado. \u201cI don\u2019t want to end up like Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> or Stephen Colbert. I want to be able to do a show where freedom of expression is truly respected, not chopped up,\u201d she sighs, referring to the two comedians whose shows were suspended under pressure from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Polo compares the current \u201cideological extremism\u201d in the country to McCarthyism<\/a>. She expresses her concern about the church\u2019s alliance with the government. \u201cGovernments aren\u2019t supposed to impose ideologies or religious dogmas on us, like the idea that abortion is a sin. We\u2019re 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,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Her criticism doesn\u2019t end there: she\u2019s also concerned that the balance between the judicial, executive and legislative branches mandated by the Constitution \u201cis being lost\u201d under Trump. She says the Supreme Court<\/a> \u201cdoes everything\u201d 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 \u201cwhen the right case arises, they\u2019ll [also] take this away.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2020, Polo was a spokesperson for When We All Vote, the nonpartisan organization founded by Michelle Obama. She tells EL PA\u00cdS that she\u2019ll be active in the upcoming elections, \u201cbecause the vote remains our most powerful weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polo has received numerous awards, including the Mickey Leland Award for her humanitarian commitment. And, since 2021, the street where Caso Cerrado was filmed \u2014 in the city of Hialeah, north of Miami \u2014 bears her name. <\/p>\n

In addition to keeping up with her more than 30 million followers on social media, she says she\u2019s \u201cvery connected\u201d 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. \u201cThat makes me really happy. I tell myself, \u2018Damn, you did a good job. You gave something nice [to others]\u2026 and you get something nice back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ana Mar\u00eda Polo is a Cuban-American lawyer. And, for nearly 20 years, she reached hundreds of thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3668,12,2808,17114,53180,2821,3,5898,10674,105913,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-235550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-cuba","tag-donald-trump","tag-florida","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-latinos","tag-miami","tag-news","tag-puerto-rico","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-telemundo","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}