A Cuban resident on the island explained this Friday, through a video posted on TikTok, the reasons that led her to leave the United States after four years of living there and return to Cuba with her family.
Massiel Trimiño, known on social media as @massiemtrimio, recorded the testimony in response to the questions she constantly receives from her online community, which has grown since she first shared her story.
According to the account, the decision was not easy: he emigrated to the U.S. leaving behind his daughter, who was just a small child at the time. "I lived in the United States for four years. I had to leave my family behind; for me, it was my daughter, and at that moment she was just a little girl," he explained.
Over time, Trimiño managed to regularize her immigration status, but the paperwork for her husband and daughter remained unresolved. After four years of waiting, the couple understood that the documentation for their daughter could take several more years.
"The moment came when we asked ourselves: do we really want to keep waiting all those years apart? So we decided to return," she affirmed.
The tiktoker acknowledged that her decision generates confusion for many, but defended the right of each family to act according to their own circumstances. "Many people do not understand that decision and others might, but in the end, each family lives its own story and makes decisions based on what it feels is best for them," she noted.
Trimiño also rejected the idea that returning equates to giving up. "Returning does not mean surrendering. For me, it means finding another way to move forward, learning to overcome every barrier that life presents," he stated.
The public announcement of his return occurred in March 2026, when he clarified that it was not a definitive farewell to the U.S., as he maintained a immigration status that would allow him to return if he chose to. At that time, his daughter had been in the process of application for approximately two and a half years.
Soon after, she began to document her home renovation in Cuba on social media, showcasing her process of readjusting to life on the island.
The case of Trimiño is not isolated. Other Cubans have made similar decisions in recent months: a 23-year-old woman returned from Costa Rica in May because her five-year-old daughter was struggling to adapt, and another emigrant announced in July his definitive return with his entire family.
However, return trips are a minority compared to the scale of the Cuban exodus in recent years. An independent estimate by economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos calculated that approximately 1.79 million people had left Cuba between 2022 and 2023. On the other hand, data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) shows that the trips to the island by Cubans residing abroad fell by 22.6% in 2025 compared to the previous year, decreasing from 294,816 to 228,091, while between January and April 2026, the year-on-year decline reached 41.2%.
"Life is too uncertain. One makes plans thinking they have all the time in the world, and then you realize that's not the case," Trimiño concluded in his video.
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