Over the phone, Denis DurĂĄn Aguila described to Alejandro the conditions of his imprisonment at âAlligator Alcatraz,â which have since been corroborated by many other accounts shared with the American media: the 24 hours spent chained to a chair upon arrival, and being crammed with dozens of others into the same âcageâ under tents that were sometimes air-conditioned, sometimes not. The shared toilets, lacking privacy and often broken, the lights that never turned off, the ârottenâ and teeming food, the incessant harassment by the guards. And then there were the daily floods caused by the rain, whose rising rain carried mud, insects, and sewage right up to the foot of their beds.
The Miami Herald revealed that only a third of the inmates had any prior criminal recordsâincluding both violent crimes and minor traffic offenses.
A lawyer points out that of the dozens of clients he has assisted following recent arrests by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), none were found to be illegal: âAll of them had papers, pending proceedings, or status, at least until this administration revoked it overnight.â
Examples abound. Thereâs the Cuban woman from Tampa, torn from her still-breastfeeding infant and sent back to Havana within twenty-four hours, despite being married to an American citizen. This Cuban man in his sixties, âin poor health,â was forced to choose between deportation to Mexico or being parachuted âinto Africa, without further details.â
Until today, Willy Allen recalls regarding Cuban immigrants in the United States, no other immigrant community benefited from a more favorable regime for accessing legalization in the United States, since a law passed under the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act. But this did not deter the community from massively throwing its support behind every Republican candidate for the White Houseâwith the sole exception of Barack Obamaâs re-election in 2012.
âThereâs a visceral rejection of the ideological side that made us flee our country, but also of campaign promises that spoke to our concernsâwhen the Democrats simply didnât speak to us,â explains Maykel Avila Rodriguez, a septuagenarian with a thick, peppered mustache.
The cruelest paradox undoubtedly strikes the recently arrived anti-Castro activists who took part in the historic demonstrations of July 2021. âThey saw Trump as an ally likely to precipitate the collapse of the Cuban regime,â says Michael Bustamante. âAnd now Trump is expelling their friends who risk imprisonment back home. To their credit, some are stepping up to criticize the administration, although they sometimes risk a lot, being very vulnerable, while even elected officials of Cuban origin among the Republicans in Congress lack this courage.â
A source, in French, sorry
