From the car wash where José and Ernesto They dry and polish tourist cars, you can’t see the big hotels in Cancun. Neither does the sea, although it is just a few kilometers away. In the neighboring town of Alfredo V. Bonfil—named in honor of the Mexican peasant leader—no one cultivates the fields anymore and few are Mexican: between the town and the coast stand the the jungle impenetrable and highway who goes to the airport. Here, newcomers to the country work exhaustive days 11 hours, in the backroom of the Caribbean.
These two Cubans plans to go to Miami along the Mexican coast changedfleeing the repression and misery of the communist regime, and because the United States, in addition to the economic blockade, also blocked the exit to the north. “I still want to go to the US, but when Trump is not there”summarizes José, 43 years old, who arrived here last summer.
It took José 28 years to raise the $5,000 that the mafias asked of him to get him off the island. “With a salary of one dollar a day, it takes you more than 5,000 days, we had to survive”account. By then, Trump had already returned to the White House and José feared spending it all only to be immediately deported. Instead, he took a flight to Managua, Nicaragua, along with 100 other Cubans. From there they took him north, hidden for three days in a car, crossing Nicaragua and Honduras. In Havana he left his children with his mother. He sends them money and hopes to be able to bring them over one day. Maybe not to Mexico anymore, but directly to the US.
Stranded
With Trump back in the White House and the US border closed, the entry of migrants into Mexico fell by 87% in 2025. However, requests for regularization increased from those who, stranded, are trying to stabilize themselves. And although Cubans represent only 8% of the “migratory encounters” registered by Mexican authorities, according to the International Organization for Migration, Your requests are the ones that have grown the most.
The jump is partly explained by the deportations from the US to Mexico of third-country nationals: Of 13,000 expelled, more than 4,300 were Cubans, the largest group. In 2024, only 487 obtained an asylum seeker card; In 2025, eight out of ten plaintiffs were already Cuban. In absolute terms, the figure is still limited: 3,870 people are waiting for a response.
“What has increased the most are regularizations and cases of foreigners deported to Mexico who want to return to their country”explains immigration lawyer Silvia Quevedo. His office, Fidens, currently handles 60 Cuban matters in Cancún, Tijuana and Mexico City; only three have told him that they want to stay in the country. “The majority hopes that policies in the US will stabilize so they can try again”he adds.
Nostalgia for Obama
Ernesto, 37, arrived in Mexico in January with a tourist visa that has since expired. He dedicates himself conscientiously to each car, and feels supported by this community of Cubans, far from home. He has a degree in Law, although in Cuba he worked as a tourist bus driver. Evokes the president’s approach to Cuba Barack Obama. “There was a lot of work. American cruise ships arrived in Havana”remember.
The mirage did not last long: “Mr. Trump arrived and revolutionized Cuba; he undid everything”. The covid 19 pandemic finished sinking the country. The blackouts lengthened. A package of chicken can cost twice as much as a monthly salary and hospitals ask you to get your own suture thread so they can operate, he explains. “There is no future for anyone. Not for young people, not for anyone else”resume.
Deported octogenarians
For Cubans who arrive in Mexico deported by the US, starting over is even more difficult: without documentation, without money and without guidance. “We were not part of the migratory route”explains Josué Leal, director of the Amparito shelter, in Villahermosa, capital of Tabasco, a state bordering Guatemala.
Josué warns that they are deporting very old people, after an entire life in the United States. Many have chronic pathologies and serious illnesses. Josué tells the story of a Cuban man, an octogenarian with Parkinson’s and untreated hypertension and another with uncontrolled diabetes and an amputation. “These last two days I have been going to hospital appointments, opening files for older adults who are now our responsibility, because there is no other choice”he explains.
Hatred of Cubans
Andrés arrived from Cuba in 2019, before most of his compatriots. “I didn’t leave of my own free will. I left because State Security threatened my mother”account. The State apparatus decided to prevent him from finishing his degree: they failed the exams that he had prepared by heart up to five times. “They wanted to keep my mouth shut, but I didn’t want to keep quiet”. He fell into depression and anxiety attacks took him to the hospital. “In the end, my mother preferred to keep me away rather than dead”he summarizes. They took him out of the country as soon as they could.
His first stop was Nicaraguabut it was worse. “I saw how the Ortega dictatorship acted like in Cuba, with its large trucks putting people inside without explanation”remember. He continued north, as Joseph would do six years later. And, like him, in Mexico, it began “washing cars”. Now, it is Albañil in construction in real estate bubble incessant of the misnamed Riviera Maya, a name manufactured by American tour operators to better sell the product.
Andrés was prepared for the exhausting days, what he did not expect was the hostility towards the Cuban, fueled by rumors and viral videos that accuse them without evidence of robberies, rapes, the increase in housing prices or lack of work. “People don’t understand what’s happening in Cuba. They ask me why I left if that was good. You are ungrateful, they tell me, they gave you free education”he says, and adds: “Many have bought the regime’s speech”.
“Without fear of being mistaken, those who suffer extortion the most in Mexico are Cubans”says lawyer Silvia Quevedo, something that human rights organizations corroborate. They ask them twice as much to rent a room and suffer express kidnappings, because they assume that they have family in the US who can send them money.
Image of Coral Beach surrounded by sargassum, near Cancún, Quintana Roo state (Mexico) / Alonso Cupul / EFE
A provisional life
Ernesto did not want to have children in Cuba, not under those conditions. “This conversation there would be impossible”he adds, and excuses himself, he must go back to work.
Now, separated from his partner due to exile, he hopes that she will also obtain a tourist visa and can at least visit him. Sometimes he fantasizes about going to Spainwhere he has a cousin with a logistics company in Zaragoza, but that trip belongs to an uncertain future. The present keeps you too busy.
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