Havana, Cuba
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Last week, US Immigration Customs Enforcement Flight returned 161 Cuban dispatchers to communist-run islands.
Upon arrival, the exiles removed bondage from their wrists and ankles, then went down 767 chartered stairs one at a time, one at a time, and were reprocessed by Cuban immigrants and health authorities. He seemed visibly vague, as if he was suddenly returning to his hometown.
Cuban officials say the flight has received many deportees before. This is further indication of the Trump administration’s resolve to fundamentally change the priority immigration status given to Cubans until recently.
Shortly after Fidel Castro came to power and aligned the Soviet Union with his revolution, the Cubans were treated similarly by both Democrat and Republican administrations as political refugees rather than immigrants, leading a unique and fast trajectory for US residency.
Just as Cubans had a generation, tens of thousands of Cubans who traveled to the US during the Biden administration in the hopes of staying could now face a possible deportation.
For many of the Cold War, the Cubans leaving the island for the United States was officially ridden by Cuban leaders as “worms” or traitors to Castro’s revolution. As attitudes and official restrictions on travel slowly changed, Cubans travelled abroad and returned to Japan became commonplace by their own unity or because they were deported.
“They’re Cuba,” Cuban immigration officer Lt. Col. Gil Robena told CNN that it was the first international television network to witness how Cuban retirees were handled when they returned to their country. “They go home. They have their families. They have no issues with immigration because they are reinserted into society.”
However, many returning Cubans complained about the treatment of ice officials. He says he sparkles marks from tight handcuffs on his wrists, telling the lost weeks of weeks at the detention center archipelago.
“It’s a painful separation. I have conflicting feelings,” said Tania Carbon Cruz of Decoty, who left behind three grown children in Texas (three children who also emigrated from Cuba). She said that children who arrived in the US a few years ago missed the cutoff and were able to miss out on the family split. “My kids are there and my husband is here,” she said.
Carbonle said she was said to have been faced with deportation at ICE after living in the US for more than three years, and agreed to return soon, rather than suffering from the long detention process.
“That president,” she said, referring to Trump, “we are being driven away from all countries, from all countries.”
Another woman quickly began sobing loudly as she entered terminal 5 of small thread and thread at the international airport of Jose Marti in Havana.
“They left my two-year-old daughter behind. I lost her,” cried Udierkis Reyes Merino.
Reyes said he was detained by ice staff in Nebraska in June during regular check-in with immigrant staff.
She said she told her she faced deportation as she did not plead for a second assault charge in 2023.
A few weeks later at the Ice Detention Center, Reyes agreed to be deported if she could take her young girl, but ice officials put her on the plane without a girl.
In response to a CNN request for information about Reyes, a Department of Homeland Security official responded via email.
“Yudierquis Reyes Merino is a criminally illegal foreigner in Cuba and illegally crossed the border near Eagle Pass, Texas in 2022. She was previously charged with child abuse, second-degree domestic assault and the use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.
“In this case, the father – the (sic) American citizen – requested that the child remain with him.
“Under President (Donald) Trump and (Homeland Security Secretary Christa) Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences.
However, a CNN review of Reyes’ criminal history did not provide a record of convictions for child abuse. As a result of the assault charge, Reyes faced additional charges of “intentional child abuse-free injuries” as her young daughter was at home at the time of the incident.
Nebraska prosecutors dropped the charges after Reyes didn’t sue the assault, court records show.
When contacted by CNN, the father of Reyes’ daughter, he said he is a US resident and, as DHS officials said, he is not a US citizen. Even if he does not have legal custody of the girl, he should remain with him in the United States and not go to Cuba.
“Life will be too difficult for her right now,” Miguel Camacho, the girl’s father, told CNN in a phone interview. “It’s dangerous now.”
If the Trump administration is ahead of the country’s plan to deport thousands of people currently stuck in immigrant areas, painful family separations could become even more common for Cubans.
The Cuban government continues to accept monthly deportation flights, even as the Trump administration strikes economic sanctions on the island, but as a way to maintain one of the few remaining communication lines to the Washington Open, Havana officials dismiss the possibility of returning to accept thousands or even thousands of citizens.
“The problem is US law. The decision by the US government to use immigration factors as political weapons against the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s created this reality.” “For decades, policies were to incite and encourage Cubans to abandon their own countries. Suddenly, the US changed their entire policy.”
For an outcast like Judierkis Reyes, lasting damage has already been done.
Interviewed at the home of a relative in central Cuba, and following the reprocessing, Reyes said she had to live with her family as she sold her home to raise funds for the US.
She spent the day trying to talk to her daughter on a video call and was unable to come to the phone. Her daughter didn’t believe it was her mother calling it.
Recounting how she crossed the Darien gap, avoided the Mexican temptation and arrived at the United States on the country’s infamous immigrant “death train,” Reyes vows to endure a risky journey to reunite with her daughter.
“Donald Trump has only three years left, and there’s the rest of his life,” Reyes said. “I’ll go and get her. I wouldn’t mind if they gave me 20 years’ prison.”
