The immigration lawyer Liudmila Marcelo ruled out this Thursday that the mass deportation of 500,000 Cubans from the United States is feasible in the short term, while responding live to a follower during her weekly interview with Tania Costa on CiberCuba.
The alarm was raised following a report on the repatriation of 500,000 Cubans published last Saturday, which cited former congressman Joe García stating that this mass repatriation would be one of the eight central points in potential negotiations between the Trump administration and the Cuban regime.
Marcelo was direct in responding to follower Maribel Montoya's question: "Look, Maribel, it's difficult to arrange a flight for seventy-some, a hundred Cubans; it rarely exceeds a hundred. I think it's once a month, sometimes, with a lot of effort it's twice a month that Cuba accepts them. So, I don't consider that to be a viable option at this moment."
The lawyer listed the specific obstacles. Among them, she mentioned background checks, acceptance of flights by Cuba, individual detention processes, and the need to demonstrate in each case that the person cannot remain in the country.
"I don't see in the near future the deportation of 500,000 Cubans to Cuba, because that's a considerable number and I don't see the legal mechanisms for that," Marcelo stated.
A key legal factor that the lawyer emphasized is the immigration status of the individuals included in that figure. "We are talking about 500 thousand Cubans, of which some are I-220A but many are Parole, whether it be Humanitarian Parole or CBP One. Almost all of these individuals have already applied for the Cuban Adjustment Act because they have met the final requirement, which was one year and one day."
This law, in effect since 1966, cannot be eliminated without Congress in the United States, and Marcelo emphasized that it continues to protect those awaiting a resolution to their applications. “These individuals are waiting here for a process to which they are entitled under a law that is still active and that continues to safeguard them.”
The actual data on deportations confirms the limited scale of the process. In the first five months of 2026, the United States deported 612 Cubans in 18 operations, totaling 1,952 deported individuals since the beginning of Trump’s second term. The first deportation flight of the year arrived in Cuba on February 9 with 170 people.
Marcelo acknowledged that there may have been a political intention behind the figure. "I believe things have been taken out of context. I have no doubt that at some point there was an intention for Cubans to really return to Cuba, because even the president has said it: if Cuba is liberated, then Cubans will be able to return because the government that oppresses them will no longer be in power."
However, he insisted that this intention does not translate into executable mechanisms as of today. The processing of applications under the Cuban Adjustment Act is also severely delayed: in January 2026, only 15 green cards were approved compared to more than 7,000 pending applications.
At the end of the segment, Marcelo mentioned that he has an immigration interview scheduled for the early days of June, related to the pause on residency cases: "I'll let you know if the officer is just calling us in for verification or if he gives us a decision."
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