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Maikel Rojas, a 45-year-old Cuban residing in South Florida, received official documents ordering him to leave the United States before August 4, 2026, just weeks after being released from the immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The documents, titled "Action Plan for Removal" and issued by the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), require him to obtain a Cuban passport and purchase a one-way plane ticket. Rojas is currently wearing an electronic ankle monitor and does not have a passport, reported the U.S. outlet CBS News.
"I must leave before August 4, 2026," Rojas said in Spanish while showing the documents to the press.
The situation has left him bewildered, as just a month earlier, officials from the Miramar Immigration Center had instructed him to return in May 2027.
Rojas arrived from Cuba in 2004, and the following year he was arrested and convicted as an accomplice to a crime, serving 13 years in prison.
After his release, he was required to report annually to immigration authorities until he was arrested in October 2025 by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, where he stayed for almost five months.
In March 2026, ICE released him with an ankle monitor after his wife, Roxana Torres, successfully secured his release through a habeas corpus petition filed alongside other wives of detainees.
"It is a very painful experience because when you have a child and a life in the United States," said Torres through tears, who has a 15-month-old son with Rojas and fears that ICE agents will return to arrest him at any moment.
Immigration attorney Willy Allen, with over four decades of practice in South Florida, explained that the case reflects the challenges faced by immigrants with serious criminal convictions.
"Anyone who has committed a crime after 1996, and that crime received a sentence of more than one year, is disqualified from living in the United States," Allen noted, warning that such cases could become increasingly common.
"Indeed, their opportunity to live here has run out," the lawyer added.
Rojas also faces another uncertainty because he fears that the Cuban regime will not accept him back.
"They told me I was going to be deported to Cuba, but that government might not accept me," he stated.
However, the landscape has changed, the Cuban regime accepted for the first time in February 2026 to receive deportees with serious criminal records, including those convicted of serious crimes, as part of the pressure exerted by the Trump administration.
According to data from ICE, by the end of March 2026, the Trump administration had returned 1,901 Cubans to Cuba since January 2025, including individuals with criminal records.
Additionally, the arrests of Cubans by ICE have increased by 463% since October 2025, and approximately 42,000 Cubans have final deportation orders in the United States.
Allen himself warned those in similar situations: "The chances of staying here for a long time or a short time are limited. Take this opportunity to find a country to which you can emigrate, see where you can build your best life, and do it."
The Alligator Alcatraz center, which Florida announced on Wednesday it will close in June 2026 with operational costs exceeding 1 billion dollars, still houses about 1,400 detainees, of which between 700 and 800 are Cubans.
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