The Trump administration has deported nearly 13,000 Cubans, Venezuelans and other nationals to Mexico, where they are vulnerable to cartel violence in an unfamiliar country, a report by Human Rights Watch released on Wednesday said.
While Mexico has accepted these types of deportations for years, the deportees under the Trump administration are older and have lived in the US for longer than in the past, making it more difficult for them to find work and increasing the urgency of the need for medical care.
The report, which is based on more than 50 interviews in the southern Mexican cities Tapachula and Villahermosa, comes as US President Donald Trump has expanded immigration enforcement to carry out his mass deportation plan.
This has meant that immigrants who were not previously targeted, such as Cubans with years or decades living in the US, have been caught up in the immigration dragnet. Some countries, such as Cuba and Venezuela, limit deportation flights or don’t accept deportees at all, so they are instead sent to Mexico or other countries with which the US has struck deals.
“Imagine being 60 or 70 years old, uprooted from your life overnight and sent to a country you don’t know, where authorities leave you out to dry without access to even the most basic services — shelter, healthcare. Imagine being dropped in dangerous cities with nothing but the clothes on your back,” said Alcira Hava, Leonard H. Sandler Fellow at Human Rights Watch, who worked on the report.
“That’s the reality for many Cubans deported to Mexico,” Hava said.
Cubans represent the largest group sent to Mexico, according to the report, with more than 4,300 deported. More than half the 41 Cubans interviewed had lived in the US since the 1980s or 1990s, arriving during the Mariel boatlift or lottery programme in the 1990s. Most had a green card but had lost it.
More than half the Cubans deported had a criminal record, but only 16% were for violent crimes, according to the researchers. One-fourth had no criminal history.
Most were detained at routine check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but some were detained at their workplace or in public spaces. None were taken before a judge to contest their deportation to Mexico, even when they expressed fear for their safety.
The Cuban diaspora, with access to a fast-tracked pathway to residency and citizenship through the Cuban Adjustment Act, has been shocked by the extent of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Once in Mexico, these deportees are sent to southern cities with few job opportunities, limited access to medical care and where cartels prey on them. They face a complicated logistical process to receive refugee status in Mexico, if they even qualify.
A shelter in Villahermosa has received Cuban deportees as old as 83 in the past year, a departure from the young men and families it usually receives, according to shelter worker Josué Leal.
“The US discards them. Cuba discards them,” Leal said, calling it a form of “double punishment.”
