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The brutal murder of a motel manager in Dallas, committed by the Cuban Yordanis Cobos-Martínez, has been used by President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to harden their rhetoric against illegal immigration and justify an extreme measure such as deporting undocumented immigrants to countries that are not their countries of origin.
The Supreme Court already approved this policy in June, paving the way for hundreds of migrants, including Cubans rejected by Havana, to be sent to countries where isolation, violence, or imprisonment awaits them.
The Destinations of Fear
In its latest statement, the DHS listed the locations where migrants like Cobos could end up:
- Eswatini: the last absolute monarchy in Africa, ruled by King Mswati III since 1986. A impoverished country, without free political parties and with protests violently suppressed. For a Cuban, exile in Eswatini means falling into an unknown corner of the world, without support networks and under a repressive regime.
- Uganda: highlighted by international organizations for systematic violations of human rights and persecution of minorities. The country has become a symbol of state repression, where migrants risk being invisible and vulnerable to abuse.
- South Sudan: a nation marked by civil war, famine, and one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. Being sent there is practically a sentence to misery, with no cultural ties or real possibility of rebuilding one’s life.
- CECOT (El Salvador): the high-security megaprison built by Nayib Bukele, where thousands of gang members serve sentences under extreme conditions. Migrants with criminal records could be transferred to this facility, which means disappearing into a prison feared even within Latin America.
Cubans trapped in limbo
Cuba systematically refuses to accept its citizens with serious criminal records, leaving dozens of undocumented Cubans trapped in a legal limbo. Under Trump, this void is being filled with destinations that seem straight out of a nightmare.
There is already a precedent. In July, a Cuban convicted of first-degree murder and linked to the gang Latin Kings was deported to Eswatini along with four other migrants classified by the DHS as “depraved monsters.” The man is now in isolation in an African prison, far from his family and without any guarantee of repatriation.
Human rights organizations warn that this practice violates fundamental principles of international protection, as it exposes individuals to contexts of violence, extreme poverty, and repression.
A policy with a human face
For Cuban migrants, the threat is not only deportation but also exile to places where they have no family or community ties. Many of them arrived in the United States seeking refuge from the island's crisis; now they face the possibility of being sent to corners where survival is uncertain and dignity is reduced to zero.
The case of Cobos has served as a political catalyst, but the measure does not differentiate between violent criminals and those who simply entered the country irregularly. The outcome is the same: the risk of a Cuban being ripped from their life in the U.S. to end up in a cell in El Salvador or lost in an African country where no one speaks their language or shares their history.
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