Trump is deporting thousands of Cubans and other migrants to Mexico

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico — It was 2 a.m. when a bus carrying dozens of U.S. deportees crashed into this sweltering city in southern Mexico.

Mexican immigration officers who guarded the group during their three-day journey across the border said the criminals, who were still wearing detainees’ prison uniforms, were now free.

Alberto Rodríguez, 73, was limping along a deserted industrial street with a cane in his hand. A stroke had left him permanently blurred; He couldn’t remember many details about his life beyond the fact that he was born in Cuba and spent nearly 50 years in the United States.

“Where am I?” he called out.

“Villahermosa,” someone replied.

Like most of the others, Rodriguez had never set foot in Mexico and had never heard of this city of a million people surrounded by dense forests. The exiles wandered in the darkness until they found a park; Rodríguez spent the first of many nights curled up on the floor trying to sleep.

As part of his sweeping crackdown on immigrants, President Trump has sent deportees to countries that are not their own, including Rwanda, El Salvador and South Sudan.

But by far the largest share of those deported from third countries are quietly sent to Mexico, where they are quickly shuttled by buses to small cities thousands of kilometers south of the US border.

Some are then sent back to their country of origin; including, in some cases, people who have demonstrated that they face possible persecution there. Others languish in Mexico with few resources and an unclear path to legal status under Mexican law.

Mexico accepted nearly 13,000 non-Mexicans deported in the first 11 months of Trump’s second term, according to Mexican government data; Among them are those from Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua.

The largest group consisted of immigrants from Cuba, whose communist government sometimes refused to take back those deported from the United States, especially those with criminal records.

Deportees deported from the United States who are undocumented in Mexico and unable to go home are stuck in “semi-stateless limbo,” according to a recent report by the advocacy group Refugees International.

Miguel Martínez Cruz, a Cuban deported from the United States, opens the door of a grocery store to customers.

Yael Schacher, one of the report’s authors, described Mexico’s decision to send migrants to cities like Villahermosa, a few hours from the Guatemala border, as an effort to keep them “out of sight.”

Villahermosa lacks adequate services; There is only one immigrant shelter, and the federal agency does not have an office that processes refugee applications.

The city is caught in the middle of a violent conflict between drug gangs. According to census data, nine in 10 residents say their city is unsafe, more than any other municipality in Mexico.

“They’re dumping extremely vulnerable people into a dangerous place,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Immigration Women’s Institute, a nonprofit organization.

For decades, Mexico has been a transit country for immigrants, mostly relatively young people and families bound for the United States.

New deportees to Mexico fit a very different profile.

Many were long-time U.S. residents who had entered the country years ago, often legally. Some were given the opportunity to stay after proving to immigration judges that they would likely be persecuted if returned to their home countries.

A Cuban immigrant poses for a portrait showing off his tattoos at a shelter in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico.

Most Cubans deported to Mexico lost their refugee status after committing crimes decades ago, but because the Cuban government refused to take them back, they were allowed to remain in the United States with unenforced deportation orders.

Removal of such immigrants has only been targeted under Trump.

Those people include people like Rodríguez, who was convicted of burglary in 1990, according to court records.

Rodríguez, slender and white-bearded, spends his days sitting in the shade of a tree outside the Oasis de Paz del Espíritu Santo Amparito, a small Catholic shelter nestled among junkyards and repair shops.

He is one of many elderly Cubans deported in recent months due to health problems, according to aid workers.

The shelter’s oldest resident is an 83-year-old who spent most of his life working in Florida before being captured and sent to a detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Many are ill, including Ricardo Pérez, 67, who said he was pushed across the U.S. border by immigration officials in a wheelchair, or Luis René Lemus, 59, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia and is struggling to obtain needed medications in Mexico.

According to Josué Martínez Leal, one of the shelter’s managers, 67-year-old Ricardo del Pino was seriously ill when he arrived at the shelter last summer. Del Pino died of cancer a few months later.

Martínez had the man’s body cremated and stored the ashes in a wooden niche in the sanctuary’s small chapel.

He is angry that the US is deporting such vulnerable people and that Mexico is not doing more to care for them.

“They’re sending them here to die,” Martínez said.

An employee at the Villahermosa shelter holds the ashes of Ricardo del Pino, who died several months after being deported from the United States last year.

Rodríguez, who slept at night outside the public hospital a few blocks from the shelter, said he felt so hopeless that he considered taking his own life.

“Frankly?” he said. “I’m just looking for a gun.”

“No, no, no,” interjected José Alejandro Aponte Delgado, 53. He wrapped his arm around his friend’s neck.

“I felt the same way at times,” Aponte said. “It’ll get better, brother. He has to go.”

But there isn’t much relief in sight.

The Trump administration’s drastic cuts in foreign aid have greatly reduced Mexico’s capacity for migrants.

Last year, the administration cut annual U.S. aid to Latin America and the Caribbean by $2 billion, forcing nonprofit shelters, legal aid providers and others working with immigrants to lay off staff or suspend operations entirely. Martínez said he had to fire the shelter’s doctor, psychologist and social worker.

The freeze also led to staff cuts at Mexico’s refugee agency, which is indirectly funded by U.S. money through the United Nations.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her country has not signed a formal agreement to take immigrants from the United States, unlike other countries that accept deportees from third countries. He said the people his country has accepted so far were welcomed for “humanitarian” reasons.

Andrés Ramírez, who was director of the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission under Sheinbaum’s predecessor, said Mexico was under pressure to appease Trump, who has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican imports if Sheinbaum does not comply with his wishes on immigration and other issues.

But he said more could be done to help deportees gain refugee protection and the current months-long process could be expedited. “If you were acting on truly humanitarian grounds, you would probably implement a much more humane policy towards these people.”

Pedro Rodríguez, a Cuban immigrant recently deported from the United States, is at the Villahermosa shelter.

Human rights advocates say Mexican authorities rarely inform deportees about their rights to seek asylum in the country. They also say Mexico is clearly violating the “non-refoulement” principle, which stipulates that governments should not send people to places where they could face persecution.

Kuhner said his organization is in contact with a Honduran-born transgender woman who has proven to a U.S. court that she would face danger if she returned to her country because of her gender identity. But after he was deported, Mexico sent him to Honduras. Kuhner said she began dressing as a man to avoid being targeted.

Refugees International documented the case of a Salvadoran man who gained protection from deportation to his home country under the Convention Against Torture. The US sent him to Mexico, which eventually helped him return to El Salvador, where he was later sent to the country’s most notorious prison.

This week, an appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. Last year, he sent a Cuban immigrant to the African kingdom of Eswatini, nearly 10,000 miles away.

This likely means more buses will be pulled into Villahermosa and deportees will be left there, still wearing prison sweats.

People like Mauricio De Leon, 50, who was born in Guatemala and taken to the United States by his mother when he was one year old. She lost custody of him and he grew up in the foster system in Long Beach.

De Leon was ordered deported in 2007 after serving time in prison for drug trafficking. He was deported last year. Mexico tried to send him to Guatemala, but Guatemala said there was no record of him. So he is essentially stateless, living off his savings as a truck driver in California.

He rents a small apartment on the roof and shares it with other deportees his age and older.

They spend their days smoking, watching movies and reminiscing about life in the USA

“I miss hamburgers,” De Leon said.

“I miss pizza,” said deported Cuban Miguel Martínez Cruz, 65, blind in one eye.

“I miss the beach,” De Leon said.

They don’t have hot water. There is no job hope. “It’s the same bad day over and over again,” he said.

Lázara Santana, 57, immigrated to the United States from Cuba at the age of 11.

He lost his refugee status 20 years ago because he sold drugs. He said his only son is a Marine who served several tours of duty in Afghanistan and voted for Trump.

Lázara Santana, a Cuban who was deported from the United States to Mexico, said that her only son is a marine who served in various missions in Afghanistan.

Every year for twenty years, he went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to check on his parole. They detained him this fall.

He said immigration officials gave him a choice about deportation: “You can go to Congo or Mexico.”

He sleeps in a shared room that he rents with money sent by his partner in the USA. He did not apply for refugee status in Mexico. He said he was afraid to leave the house.

“I go to sleep crying, I wake up crying,” he said. “This feels like a nightmare and I can’t wake up.”

Times researcher Cary Schneider in Los Angeles contributed to this report.