Palenque, Mexico – In a gloomy house tucked in a dead-end street in southern Mexico, three Cuban men wait out their days watching Hollywood movies, playing dominoes and pooling their change to buy food.
Ricardo Scull Delgado, Ernesto Perez Chapman and Lazaro Diaz Garcia have been stuck there since December.
All three are in their 70s. All three arrived in the United States in 1980, as part of an exodus of refugees fleeing hardship and repression in Cuba.
And all three were expelled from the country last year as part of President Donald Trump's push for mass deportation.
They were piled onto a bus in Arizona and driven south for three days straight until they reached Palenque, a town close to Mexico's border with Guatemala.
“When we arrived in Palenque, it was pouring with rain, and they just kicked us out of the bus onto the curb,” Scull Delgado, 71, said. “The cruelty was unbelievable, so inhumane."
Of all the deportees sent to Mexico, Cubans represent the largest third-country population. More than 4,000 Cuban citizens have been deported from the US to Mexico since Trump took office for a second term.
But that mass expulsion signals a reversal in US policy. After decades of sheltering Cubans in exile, critics say the US is now leaving them in limbo abroad, with no means of supporting themselves.
“Our deportation wasn't legal,” said Scull Delgado. “But this Trump guy thinks he can do whatever he wants and has an agreement with the Mexican government.”
“They’ve taken everything away from me, for all the years I was working. Everything.”
