Trump and his allies in Miami are ending the Cuban Adjustment Act

The Trump administration is betraying the Cubans who fled communism. Nothing like this has happened since Fidel Castro came to power. There was no need to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act, enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966—the paper version of Ellis Island for Cubans: it has been enough to ignore its letter and disregard its spirit. They have employed a silent method to dismantle it without signing the death certificate.

The law is straightforward. Any Cuban who has legally entered the United States after January 1, 1959, can apply for permanent residency after one year and one day in the country. The only requirement is to have been inspected and admitted, or inspected and granted parole. This is an adjustment of status: no court, no immigration judge, no asylum process. The procedure is carried out administratively by sending Form I-485 to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

In these six decades, millions of Cubans have gained legal status through this legal vehicle: the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA).

A slow death

But upon Donald Trump's return to the White House in January 2025, the fate of the CAA was sealed.

The figures are undeniable: between April and June 2024, under Joe Biden, USCIS approved 49,965 residency applications under the Adjustment Act. After that, there was a dramatic drop: 4,098 between October and December 2025; just 50 between January and March 2026; and, between April and June, 139 approvals compared to 447 denials. This represents a 99.7% decrease in approvals over the last two years.

In the second quarter of 2026, more than three out of four decisions —76.3%— were negative. In absolute numbers, the negative decisions are even fewer than in the same quarter of 2024 (662) and 2025 (757): what has changed is that USCIS has practically stopped resolving cases.

Meanwhile, 342,360 files remain undecided. This means 342,360 individuals are left without knowing when their applications will be resolved. Hundreds of thousands of families are in a state of fear and helplessness, often without even receiving the work permits they are entitled to by law. Lives on hold, terrified individuals, many of whom are medicated due to anxiety and depression.

And those are the ones who got lucky: those who met the requirements to apply for benefits under the legislation. There is a group in a worse situation: between 400,000 and half a million Cubans with I-220A who remain in an exasperating migratory limbo, while the White House appeals in court every judicial ruling that could benefit them.

Simultaneously, tens of thousands of Cubans—with humanitarian parole or CBP One—have had their residency applications and even work permits frozen. The purpose seems clear: to leave them without resources to pay for rent and food, to subject them to the terror of imprisonment or being sent to a third country, and thereby push them towards self-deportation.

Never before, in 67 years of exile, have Cubans with pending processes felt such panic in what has been the most generous refuge in history for our community.

The Chief Deporter

Meanwhile, arrests and deportations continue unabated. Donald Trump deported 3,385 Cubans during his first term and —according to an analysis by PolitiFact— another 8,500 so far in his second term until August 2026. Some sources, however, suggest even higher numbers: between 13,000 and 15,000 when both periods are combined. He has become the Chief Deporter of Cubans; by far more than any other president in the nation's history.

A large number of those individuals were expelled back to the very communist dictatorship they fled from, while the Central Committee of Calle Ocho—and its three illustrious congressmen—maintain a complicit silence. Another 4,353—according to Human Rights Watch, just between January 2025 and March 2026—were sent to Mexico, many of them without even identification documents. And more than a hundred have ended up, chained and beaten, in African countries; most of them without a criminal record and amidst their legal proceedings. One of those destinations is the Central African Republic, where the arrival of approximately a hundred Cubans has been reported. A country that the State Department itself classifies as Level 4. For Americans, this sends a severe warning: “Do Not Travel.”

What the MAGA narrative does not tell

Obama deported more undocumented immigrants overall, but mostly single men with criminal records and repeat border crossers. He never targeted women, children, pregnant women, or the elderly in the streets, nor did he break up working families. The number of Cubans deported during his two terms is just a few hundred. In contrast, during that time, he allowed the entry of hundreds of thousands fleeing Cuba, including the first caravans through Central America in 2016.

Contrary to the self-serving political narrative, the elimination of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy in the final days of his administration did not stop the arrival of Cubans or the granting of residency: approximately 300,000 were awarded between 2017 and 2023, according to USCIS. Trump 45, for his part, began to issue I-220A forms en masse at the border starting in January 2017 and never even considered reinstating the previous policy.

During the following administration, Biden opened the doors to those arriving from Cuba, granted work permits, and many Cubans with I-220A began to experience, for the first time, a life in freedom: they formed families, bought homes, and even started businesses while waiting for a definitive regularization, as had happened during other migration exoduses in the 60s, the 80s (Mariel), and the 90s (raft crisis). It was Trump who unleashed the harassment and persecution to send them back to the same regime they had escaped from... or to Africa.

The Allies of Miami

To tell the truth, the attack on the core of the Cuban Adjustment Act began much earlier. It was Republican congressmen from Miami, starting with David Rivera (2012) and Carlos Curbelo (2015), supported by Mario Díaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Senator Marco Rubio, who tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to undermine the law in Congress. The idea was to limit it, reduce its protections, and create divisions among Cuban refugees between those entitled to the legislation and those who could even face penalties. A gradual dismantling of the law's text and its purpose.

With the notable exceptions of those mentioned above, until then the Cuban Adjustment Act had only had one fierce enemy: Fidel Castro.

Today, representatives María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez have been complicit by omission, inaction, and, at times, through their outright support for policies that harm immigrants and refugees from their own country of origin or that of their ancestors. The three celebrated the Alligator Alcatraz detention camp, a center of horrors condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security itself. None of them have voiced even the slightest objection to how ICE has turned Miami, the symbol of resistance and the vibrancy of the Cuban exile, into the national capital of immigrant detentions.

Furthermore, when the three congressmen had all the influence and power to push for the regularization of hundreds of thousands of Cubans with I-220A —with their crucial votes in the negotiations of the budget law known as Big Beautiful Bill— they chose to bow to Trump and betray the Cubans.

And as expected, they have not said a single word about how this administration is destroying the immigration protections that have benefited so many Cubans, including their own relatives, for decades.

For now, the Adjustment Act remains in effect; it has not been repealed. However, in practice, it is as if it does not exist. Trump has been suffocating it. And those who should defend it, instead of standing up and protecting our community, are openly cooperating in that infamous plan.

Joe Garcia is a former Democratic congressman. He represented Florida's 26th District in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015.