"It’s probably a different talk than I would have had if I had a white son."“I felt like coming to the country, dealing with the death of a mother, learning English and enduring the normal trials and tribulations of high school and middle school were enough on the young man’s plate.”Of the incredulous responses he’s received from users who point back to a March 2016 photo in which Gaetz refers to Nestor as a “local student” or a 2017 Facebook video Gaetz recorded for constituents with Nestor sitting in the background in which he calls Nestor his “helper” (seeming almost to catch himself on an S-sounding word first), Gaetz says:Gaetz says his bond with Nestor has been known in his Florida community and among his social circle, including on Capitol Hill: “My friends know I have a son. GOP Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz told People Magazine on Thursday that his newly-revealed 19-year-old “son” is not actually his legally-adopted child because he “did not formally adopt” him.. Gaetz surprised social media users Thursday afternoon by revealing he has a Cuban-born “son” named Nestor Galban after a fiery exchange with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) (Richmond had referred to his own son. “It is about black males, black people in the streets that are getting killed, and if one of them happens to be your kid, I’m concerned about him, too, and clearly, I’m more concerned about him than you are.”“Also he was never ‘hiding’ his son,” Hill added. It just wasn’t the right time in middle school and high school to subject him to politics,” Gaetz says now.He says that, except for an interruption during Nestor’s junior year after Gaetz and Nestor’s sister broke up, Nestor has basically lived with him since moving from Cuba.“And as I’ve talked to him throughout the day,” Gaetz says, “he’s very taken by the fact that he has a lot more followers on social media now.”Detailing the timeline, Gaetz tells PEOPLE Nestor lived with him for around four years after first arriving in Cuba before going to Miami for his junior year and living with his biological father: “Then he turned 18 [and] it was easier for him to just move back with me.” (Gaetz declines to specify when exactly he and Nestor's older sister broke up.
He talks about Nestor more than anything, has done so much for his son & is truly a proud dad. )Briefly speaking with PEOPLE while on the phone with Gaetz, Nestor says: “Matt is not my biological father, but he raised me as his own son when I came from Cuba after my mother’s death.”Afterward, Gaetz said that he "appreciate[d] your passion" but then asked Richmond if he was saying none of the other representatives had non-white kids. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced a Cuban-born teenager whom he raised as a son, following a fiery personal debate on race with Rep. Cedric Richmond.