A Cuban who sold his apartment in Havana and paid $10,000 to coyotes to reach the United States ended up spending more than a year in immigration custody and was deported back to the island without having lived a single day in freedom on U.S. territory.
The story of Orbe, as highlighted in the report Naufragos en La Habana, was published by El Faro, a Central American outlet specializing in investigative and in-depth journalism, founded in El Salvador in 1998 and currently established as a nonprofit foundation based in Costa Rica.
The media found the Cuban again in Havana, where he works as a gym instructor after being deported in March 2025. He now has another opportunity to leave the island: according to the report, Mexico has once again approved a visa for him.
Orbe was 32 years old when he decided to emigrate in 2024. He was studying at the University of Physical Culture and working as an instructor in a gym, but he felt that he no longer had a future in Cuba.
After receiving a Mexican visa, he sold a small apartment he owned in El Vedado for $15,000. A friend living in the United States had offered him a job waxing and polishing vehicles, although Orbe had a much greater aspiration: to join the U.S. Air Force, serve for several years, and eventually seek citizenship.
He left Cuba in January 2024.
To complete the journey, he hired a coyote recommended by his friend, to whom he would have to pay $10,000 once he arrived at his destination. However, according to his testimony, things changed upon arriving in Mexicali.
"They took me to Mexicali, and that’s when I realized I had been scammed," he recalled.
Orbe reported that an armed man demanded money from him before crossing. He ultimately paid the $10,000, but the traffickers only took him to U.S. territory and abandoned him.
Shortly thereafter, he was intercepted by immigration agents.
He entered the United States, but he was never freed
Unlike many Cuban migrants who were processed and subsequently released while they continued their immigration procedures, Orbe remained in custody.
According to what he told El Faro, he was initially in Arizona. At one point, he fell ill and was placed in isolation. While he was there, he claimed that other Cubans detained with him were transferred to another facility and subsequently released.
He stayed.
Orbe then began his process to request protection in the United States. According to his account, he underwent a credible fear interview, but a question about his past during Mandatory Military Service in Cuba complicated the case.
The Cuban responded that he had received military training and later explained to an agent the roles he had performed.
"I was transcribing documents, and there was all sorts of things," he/she said.
According to Orbe, these documents could contain information about both military personnel who would be promoted and individuals who refused to serve or were classified by Cuban authorities as "counter-revolutionaries."
The Cuban asserts that the U.S. authorities interpreted those roles as a potential collaboration with the Cuban government, something that ultimately held significant weight in his migration process.
Your case before an immigration judge
After about three months in Arizona, Orbe was transferred to a detention center in Texas, and his case was presented before Immigration Judge Stuart D. Alcorn.
The existence and position of Alcorn can be confirmed in the records of the United States Department of Justice: he was an immigration judge in the court of Pearsall, Texas.
According to Orbe's account, during one of the hearings, the issue of his military service in Cuba came up again.
The Cuban asserts that the judge himself indicated that the mandatory nature of Cuban military service did not automatically exclude him from applying for asylum.
Finally, however, Alcorn rejected his request, according to testimony gathered by El Faro. Orbe claims that the judge believed he had not demonstrated having suffered torture nor that he would be persecuted upon returning to Cuba.
The Cuban decided to appeal.
Several more months passed while he remained detained. During that time, he recounted that he even avoided communicating with his mother due to the emotional toll his situation took on him.
"That breaks you and shatters you," he recalled.
"You won the appeal!"
Orbe states that he later received news from a friend that his appeal had been successful.
"You won the appeal!" he remembers her saying.
The report does not publish the resolution of the appeal nor does it identify the case number, making it impossible to independently determine what exactly the appeal instance decided or what its legal effects were.
According to Orbe, when he informed the immigration agents that he had won, one of them replied that the new measures implemented by the Trump administration prevented him from being released.
The testimony coincides temporally with the tightening of border policy that began following Trump's return to the White House on January 20, 2025, although the specific claim that Orbe attributes to the agent regarding a halt to "all" asylum cases cannot be substantiated based on the published presidential measures.
Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and restricted access to immigration provisions, including asylum, for certain foreigners entering through that border. The administration also ordered an increase in arrests and deportations.
Finally, Orbe was placed on a federal plane along with other detainees and sent to Cuba.
He left the island in January 2024 and was deported in March 2025.
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