For decades, Cuban nationals who reached U.S. soil were routinely granted entry under a cold-war-era policy that treated them as political refugees fleeing communism. That preferential treatment has been dismantled under President Donald Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown, leaving many Cuban immigrants living in fear of arrest and deportation.
Among them is May Díaz, a 36-year-old musician from the city of Camaguey who fled Cuba after participating in the July 2021 anti-government protests. Beaten by police, she left the island three months later, traveled through Mexico, and entered the United States near Mexicali on Oct. 13, 2021. Under the Biden administration, Díaz was released on her own recognizance within days and moved to New Jersey to await her asylum hearing.
She held odd jobs in Texas and Florida while her application was pending, but in October 2025 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied her request for asylum. A month later her work permit was rescinded.
In March 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents visited her Houston apartment. Díaz was not home at the time, but she said she hurriedly packed her bags and moved to Miami after learning of the stopover.
“Through his immigration policies, Trump is trampling on what this country has always stood for, a place of refuge for the poor and the vulnerable,” Díaz told the Guardian. “There is no difference between a Cuban who is languishing in a prison cell on the island and a Cuban living here who has no possibility of finding a job.”
ICE data shows that nearly 8,000 Cuban nationals had been expelled from the U.S. as of April 2026, more than double the 3,385 deported during Trump’s entire first term. Most have been sent across the border to Mexico, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which described many as older people with serious health conditions who had lived in the U.S. for years or decades.
“The Mexican government is not offering them any way to obtain durable legal status outside of the asylum system, leaving many in limbo with no shelter, no medication, and at the mercy of criminal organizations,” said Alcira Silva Hava of Human Rights Watch’s refugee and rights division.
The rapid deportation of Cubans reflects a shift in priorities under Trump, who has coupled the immigration crackdown with escalating pressure on Cuba’s government, analysts said.
“Trump doesn’t want more [Cuban] immigrants, but he does want regime change,” said Susan Eckstein, a Boston University professor emerita who has written three books on Cuba. “He’s been obsessed with being anti-immigrant, and Cubans are among the largest groups [of foreign nationals] who are coming into the U.S.”
A White House official said the administration was simply upholding the law. “The Trump administration remains committed to enforcing federal immigration law and deporting illegal aliens who are unlawfully present in the country,” the official said. “As the president stated, Cuba is a failed country that has been horribly run for many years. Its flailing leaders should make a deal with the United States before it is too late.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Florida-born son of Cuban immigrants and a potential 2028 Republican presidential candidate, has been a central figure in shaping Cuba policy. Eckstein said Rubio would rather see would-be immigrants remain in Cuba and protest. “It then becomes their issue rather than a result of external pressure,” she said.
The deportation campaign has made Miami the metropolitan area with the highest number of removals nationwide since the start of the year. That has put three Cuban-American Republican members of the U.S. House in a difficult position. Reps. María Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez voted Tuesday for a $70 billion Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that Trump signed into law Wednesday, increasing ICE’s budget to more than triple its previous annual level through the end of the president’s term. None of the three granted interviews to the Guardian.
Salazar has publicly called on DHS to continue shielding Cubans, along with Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, who have pending immigration cases and no criminal records. She has also urged the department to resume suspended citizenship processing and naturalization ceremonies for Cuban and Venezuelan applicants.
Political scientist Eduardo Gamarra of Florida International University said that while Trump’s approval rating among Cuban American registered voters in Florida has fallen — to 53% from 68% in the 2024 election — the core remains loyal. “That core is as Trumpist as they were two years ago,” he said.