When they called Dylan to go to the ICE detention center infirmary (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service), thought it was some medical procedure. This Cuban 32 years old, who had been living in Miamihad already spent 10 months in the Imperial Regional Detention Facilityin Calexico, California, waiting for an immigration hearing that was postponed again and again. That night, however, two agents were waiting to take him out of the center. ““I was willing to return to Cuba, but I never thought I would end up in Mexico.”tells EL PERIÓDICO.
Cubans are the largest group of those deported by the US to third countries: 4,353 Cubans have been deported to Mexico since Donald Trump returned to the White House, since he cannot return them to Cuba. Dylan, a fictitious name to protect his identity, had asked to go out. “If in the end they are going to deport me, don’t keep me waiting for pleasure. “I prefer to sign the self-deportation order rather than a deportation order, which would make it difficult for me to return to the United States,” he explains.
The man, together with a group made up of some 30 men and five womenwas introduced handcuffed on a bus. After about 15 minutes—the length of time it takes to reach the border with Mexico—they were made to get out, their handcuffs were removed, and they were put into another vehicle. One of the detainees began to shout: He had realized that they were not going to get on a plane or return to their country. They took them to Mexico. The agents ended up taking him back. The rest was in charge of the Mexican authorities.
From Mexicali they passed through Monterrey and, finally, to Villahermosa, in Tabasco. “They are now free. They are in Mexico. They can go“So they were told to get off the bus, after more than 40 hours traveling 3,500 kilometers. The others dispersed. Dylan was left alone.”I didn’t think they would release me without guidance or documentation. I didn’t know what to do”.
“A movable object”
Dylan left his Cojimar natal, a coastal town near Havanaalong with his sister and 10 other Cubans. They were going in a fisherman’s boat that he had invited anyone who wanted to attempt the journey to the United States. After about 12 hours at sea, they arrived in the Florida Keys. It was 2021 and the humanitarian crisis had escalated on the island. The following year, his parents made the same trip. The family gradually settled in Miami. He worked in maintenance and cleaning windows of skyscrapers. ““Life in the US was good, it kept me focused on work and there were opportunities.”dice.
He never regularized his situation. He tried to ask for political asylum, but a lawyer asked him for $8,000 and he couldn’t pay it. “I trusted myself,” he admits. He thought that nothing would happen to him because he worked and had no problems. Until one day at 7 in the morning on his way to work, he missed a zebra crossing. The police asked him for documentation. From there it went into the hands of the immigration authorities.
“I never thought that would happen, that Trump would win, that they could arrest you for any stupid thing,” he admits. “I never thought I would be detained by ICE. It’s terrible, those people don’t play. When one falls into his hands, he becomes a movable object”reports.
First they took him to a detention center in Miami, where he spent 18 days in a cell with capacity, he estimates, for 20 people, where there would be about 50. “They had us waiting to register, but we couldn’t fit downstairs,” he says. “It was such a fury of deportations that they themselves collapsed the spaces they had.” He was later transferred to California.
“People didn’t know how it got there.“He remembers. He was called up to five times to testify before who he believes was a judge, by video call. “They asked me questions, I answered and, in the end, they told me: ‘We don’t have enough evidence; your case is postponed.'”
He never had a lawyer. There was a figure whom the detainees called “the deporter“, a man to whom “you could ask questions and he would advise you on your case,” he says. Dylan avoided approaching him. “I didn’t talk to him, I didn’t trust anyone, I just wanted to leave.” Other detainees told him about self-deportation, which he had to request on some tablets available in the hallway. He did it three times, until they called him to the infirmary.
View of a graffiti on the border fence that divides the state of Mexicali (Mexico) and Calexico (USA) / JUAN BARAK / EFE
Return by your means
Dylan was on the street for three days. Rey Tejadilla, a Cuban musician who had taken refuge in Mexico, found him there. “I picked him up at a church where I went to sing,” he recalls. He was disoriented and without resources. Tejadilla arrived in Mexico two years ago and asked for refuge. He has promoted a civil association focused on youth, art and culture, and has seen more Cubans expelled from the US arrive. “They are left in limbo. “They bring them here, they leave them on the street, with everything that entails.”he states.
That Dylan ended up in Villahermosa was no coincidence. The largest city of Tabasco, a state bordering Guatemala, has a headquarters of COMAR, the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees, responsible for processing refugee applications. Tejadilla accompanied Dylan there to try to help him with the paperwork.
“He wanted to return to Cuba,” Rey says of Dylan. But Cuba does not easily accept those who have fled the Castro regime without permission. In his case, Rey says, the response was unfeasible: “They gave him 10 days to return to his country on his own. But he had nothing.”. Thus, Dylan decided to try to regularize himself in Mexico.
Family reunification
Dylan lives with a family that took him in, has gotten a job as a maintenance assistant at a local gym, and hopes to be able to rent his own room next month. His hope is that his mother, who already has legal residence in the US, can one day request family reunification and take him back. He also imagines showing up at an American embassy and “asking for forgiveness” so they will let him return. “If it were up to me, tomorrow I’ll go with my dad and my mom,” he says. “I hope it doesn’t take more than five years. “I want to enter the US legally this time.”.
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