Yasmany Moreno de Armas, a 31-year-old Cuban deported to the Central African Republic, published a message from Bangui in which he requests assistance from the Cuban-American community and gives a direct warning to the immigrants who remain in the United States.
"They say they are deporting to a third country. This is not a third country; they are deporting to a second continent," asserts Moreno de Armas in an Instagram reel.
"Thank you to the Cuban community for your support. All I'm asking is that you share this video so that the United States stops deporting people to Africa. They are destroying us. They are deporting all Latinos to Africa," he stated.
The message, recorded under precarious conditions from the Central African capital, circulated widely among Cuban, Venezuelan, and Mexican communities on social media.
"We are suffering here, far from family. Venezuelans are also being sent here, to a second continent, far away from our families," he stated.
Why was this Cuban deported to Africa?
Yasmany Moreno de Armas arrived in Florida by raft in September 2016 and was admitted under the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy, which was eliminated in January 2017 by the administration of Barack Obama.
He attempted to regularize his situation through the Cuban Adjustment Act, but his application for permanent residency was rejected for being submitted outside the timeframe of his parole. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him in May 2025, and he spent nearly a year in custody before being deported on August 1, 2026.
What makes his case particularly serious is that he was never informed of his destination. He found out he would land in Bangui only after five hours of flight, when the plane was already descending. He had never heard of the Central African Republic before his deportation.
In Bangui, he was held in a building alongside deportees from Ecuador, Honduras, Nepal, Russia, Vietnam, and other countries, none of which have any connection to the CAR.
Moreno de Armas claims he has no criminal record, although documents from the Cuban government confirm that he was imprisoned on the island for "illegal departure from national territory" during an initial attempt to emigrate.
Other Cubans deported to Africa
On August 20, the U.S. executed the first deportation flight to Liberia under an agreement to accept up to 1,200 migrants from third countries within 12 months.
Four Cubans on board that flight —Carlos Rodríguez López, Leandro Sánchez, Emilio Destrade Correoso, and Darwin Hernández Calvo— refused to disembark the plane in Monrovia and were transferred to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, where they remain detained.
These migrants are located in a hotel converted into a detention center under a 7.5 million dollar agreement with the Trump administration. One of them uses a colostomy bag and survives without access to medical care.
At the beginning of August, around 22,000 people had been sent to at least 26 countries under the third-country deportation scheme promoted by the Trump administration, which has signed agreements with at least 35 nations.
Between October 2025 and June 2026, more than 4,000 Cubans were issued deportation orders solely in Florida.
Filed under: