The Drama of Cubans Deported from the US: Real Testimonies

The return looks nothing like the American dream. For Cubans deported from the United States, arriving back in Cuba is a double blow: returning to a country in deep crisis after having built — or tried to build — a life across the Florida Straits.

Michel’s Story: From Nebraska to Placetas

Michel arrived in the United States in 2022, taking the so-called “volcano route”: a flight to Nicaragua followed by thousands of kilometers overland to the US southern border. Like some 620,000 Cubans during Biden’s presidency, he turned himself in to Border Patrol and was released under I-220A and I-220B forms as an asylum seeker.

He settled in Nebraska. He committed no crimes — “not even a traffic ticket,” he says. But in October 2025, when he showed up for his annual appointment with his immigration officer, he was arrested and sent to a detention center.

A month later, in November, he was deported to Havana.

“After the medical check and the interview at the airport, they gave us a snack and put us on buses divided by province. We landed mid-morning and by the afternoon I was back in my hometown,” Michel recalls.

Returning to Nothing

What he found in Placetas, 300 kilometers east of Havana, was a blackout and the coldness of friends and relatives. His mother had died of COVID-19 in 2021. His father abandoned them as children. His ex-wife had moved to Spain with their son.

To finance the journey in 2022, Michel and his brother had sold the house they inherited from their mother. Now he slept in an apartment his brother had later purchased — practically uninhabitable, full of construction materials.

With money sent from abroad, he fixed up one room. “That was my salvation, because it kept me from having to live crashed at someone else’s home during the two months I spent in Cuba,” he says.

The Numbers Reveal the Scale

According to Havana Times, during the first year of Trump’s second term:

• 1,669 Cubans deported directly to the island — double the annual average of his first administration
• 300 more than all deportations executed by Biden in 2024
• Hundreds sent to third countries, mostly Mexico
• Extreme cases: three Cubans deported to Eswatini and South Sudan, African nations where Cuba doesn’t even have a consulate

Every Door Closed

What makes this situation particularly desperate is that Trump has systematically shut down every legal immigration pathway for Cubans:

• December 2025: canceled the family reunification program that had benefited Cubans since 2007
• January 2026: froze visa processing for 65 countries, including Cuba
• Humanitarian Parole and CBP One: eliminated
• Cuban Adjustment Act: suspended the right to apply for permanent residency after one year and one day, and citizenship after five years

Meanwhile, Nicaragua closed the migration route that hundreds of thousands of Cubans had used since 2021 to reach the US southern border.

Life in Limbo

Michel didn’t stay in Cuba. In January 2026 he traveled to Mexico, where he now lives in Ciudad Juárez, on the border with Texas. His wife Jennifer, a Mexican woman naturalized as a US citizen whom he married in 2025, is looking for work as a nursing assistant in Texas.

The provisional plan: she works in the US, he lives in Mexico. “Like that, until we see whether this man finishes his presidency or something happens,” Michel writes.

Did he consider staying in Cuba? “Not a chance,” he replies without hesitation. “After living abroad I couldn’t adapt. It’s very hard to return to blackouts, the heat, and the mosquitoes. Even with money you’re not safe. Who can guarantee you won’t get chikungunya?”

A Drama Just Beginning

With the energy crisis deepening and Trump’s pressure on Cuba intensifying — now with regime change in his sights — the situation for deported Cubans grows even more precarious.

They return to a country where 64% of the population suffers blackouts, where the dollar exceeds 500 pesos on the informal market, and where options for legal re-emigration are virtually nonexistent.

Michel’s drama is not unique. It’s the story of thousands of Cubans trapped between a country that doesn’t want them and one they don’t want to return to.