The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported in recent days about two Cubans with deportation orders and criminal records, one currently incarcerated and the other in immigration custody, who have accumulated criminal backgrounds in New York and Florida.
The cases involve Daniel Rodríguez-Ricardo, currently in penal custody and whose ICE custody is expected to take over when he is released, and Salvador J. Sotolongo, recently arrested by immigration agents in Florida and who remains in custody awaiting his expulsion.
The Detention and Deportation Operations Office (ERO) in Buffalo reported on October 1 that Rodríguez-Ricardo, born in Cuba, has been sentenced since 2011 to terms that, according to ICE, total approximately seven years in prison for offenses including theft, burglary, and drug possession.
Additionally, according to ICE, an immigration judge ordered his deportation in 2014, but the Cuban remained in the United States. The agency stated that it will take custody of him once his current period of incarceration ends.
"When he comes out, ICE will be there to take him home," stated ERO Buffalo in the post, accompanied by a photograph of the Cuban.
Rodriguez-Ricardo's criminal record also includes a conviction that was not mentioned in the brief statement from ICE.
Documents from the New York judicial system show that on March 21, 2017, he was convicted in Monroe County after pleading guilty to first-degree criminal contempt. The sentence was upheld unanimously in December 2021 by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court.
The file reveals that the court also issued a protection order prohibiting contact with the victim. Rodríguez-Ricardo challenged this measure, claiming that the victim herself wanted a less severe restriction, but the appeals court determined that the judge had the authority to impose a total contact ban and upheld the decision.
Separately, ICE Miami announced on Sunday the arrest of Salvador J. Sotolongo, another Cuban citizen who already had a final deportation order.
According to the agency, Sotolongo has sentences for multiple aggravated assaults, firearm-related offenses, domestic violence, obstruction of justice, and other traffic violations.
ICE indicated that the Cuban individual remains in their custody while the procedures to carry out the deportation order are underway.
The cases add to other recent arrests of Cubans with final deportation orders and criminal records. At the beginning of October, ICE re-arrested Jean Marcell Pérez García in Florida, a resident of the United States for over two decades who has been convicted of drug trafficking and distribution, fraud, resisting arrest, and robbery.
Pérez García had already been released months earlier by order of a federal judge, who believed that his detention had been extended without a real prospect of deportation, but he was once again taken into immigration custody while awaiting his expulsion.
In July, immigration authorities also arrested Elias Cardoza-Torres, a Cuban whose final deportation order had been issued in April 2000 in Florida. According to ICE, in the decades that followed, he accumulated convictions for drug sale and possession, burglary, vehicle theft, and a felony related to firearms.
The possibility of executing these types of old orders has gained particular relevance in 2026. In February, Cuba received a flight from ICE with 170 deported Cubans, including individuals convicted of serious crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and drug trafficking.
U.S. authorities then noted that Havana had historically been reluctant to accept certain returns, particularly of citizens with criminal records, a situation that for years complicated the enforcement of numerous final deportation orders.
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