The Cuban content creator Marcos Barrera Martorell published a video on Instagram in which he suggests that the main enemy of Cubans in the United States is not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but other Latinos.
The reel, recorded from inside a vehicle and accompanied by the message "I had to say it," has accumulated nearly 50,000 views, over 4,000 "likes," and hundreds of comments, becoming a new point of discussion about the internal tensions within the Hispanic community in the country.
The post sparked a wave of reactions and comments that ranged from jokes to serious remarks, highlighting certain nationalities as the most controversial in the United States when it comes to reporting a potential illegal immigrant.
Several followers shared specific experiences of discrimination from other Latinos. One user recounted how, upon revealing her Cuban background at work, her coworkers began to interrogate her: "Do you get food stamps? Do you already have residency?"
According to her: "Being Cuban and having benefits was enough for everyone to turn against me, and they didn't stop until they got me out."
This perception of envy or resentment from Latino communities towards Cubans in the United States has structural roots.
The Cuban Adjustment Act and other immigration protection mechanisms have historically provided newcomers from the island with advantages such as accelerated residency and access to social assistance programs, which creates tension with other migrant groups that do not have those protections.
The debate is not new. In March 2025, another Cuban influencer stirred controversy by stating that "a Cuban was born to succeed and a Mexican was born to watch a Cuban succeed," remarks that were publicly challenged by the influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina.
In July 2025, the Cuban YouTuber Yander Serra harshly criticized established Cubans in the U.S. who support the deportations of newcomers, calling them "the worst scum," highlighting that divisions also exist within the Cuban community itself.
Marcos Barrera Martorell is not a stranger to this kind of reflective content with a humorous touch. In October 2024, he published a viral video in which he joked about the reasons not to return to Cuba, with the phrase that became popular among his followers: "We'll be poor, but we'll be yumas!".
The context of mass deportations driven by the Trump administration in 2025 and 2026 has intensified these tensions, placing Cuban migrants in an uncomfortable position: caught between ICE operations and the mistrust of their own Latino neighbors.
The question posed by Marcos in his video —about who represents the greatest threat to Cubans in the United States— resonates deeply, as indicated by the comments, with many who have long wanted to express this sentiment.
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