“They are people who have been left in limbo,” says Luis Rey García Villagrán.
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, March 19, 2026 – Mexico City / In Tapachula there are nearly 500 Cubans deported by the U.S. who have been “abandoned in the early morning over the last month in different locations,” reports Luis Rey García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignification. “They are people who have been left in migratory limbo,” he says.
The activist tells 14ymedio that “these people have lost all their rights” and asserted that “they are in a situation of statelessness.” They are migrants, he said, whom Cuba does not want and who in the U.S. “have already lost their rights.”
Mexican authorities have ignored the demands of these deportees. The activist points out that when going to the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar), deported Cubans are allowed to fill out forms, and “in the best case they are asked to wait between three and four months to receive an email that will never arrive.”
With the closure of the U.S. border since Donald Trump assumed the presidency, García Villagrán says that around 30,000 Cubans have been stranded, to which must be added the people being deported, among whom “there are elderly people and others living on the streets.”
The deputy secretary for Human Mobility of the Secretariat of the Southern Border, Eduardo Antonio Castillejos Argüello, acknowledged to local media that last year nearly 12,000 people deported from the United States were recorded, without specifying their nationality.
In December of last year, Oliver, who is Cuban, told this newspaper that the U.S. was deporting criminals to Mexico and “erasing their records before they cross.”
Oliver, who had an I-220A form, reported that along with 37 other migrants from the Island he was expelled and abandoned “without documents or money” in the country, and his future was left in limbo. The man spent two days sleeping on the street, wandering without eating because the rest of the deportees split up. “Here, friendship is nothing. It’s every man for himself.”
García Villagrán said they are seeking to pressure Comar and the National Migration Institute to assist migrants deported by the U.S., for which they have already gathered around 350 signatures. “Many of them remain in precarious conditions, sleeping in public spaces or carrying out informal activities to survive, while facing the lack of documents that define their migratory status.”
In migration offices “there are around 15,000 applications from Cubans” that have been pending for months without a solution, the activist added.
Translated by Regina Anavy
______________________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.