Cubans deported to Mexico face legal limbo after US removals

Thousands of Cuban nationals expelled from the United States under President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign have ended up in Mexico, where many say they have no legal status, work rights or access to basic services. The removals matter because Cuba has often refused to accept deportees from the US, leaving Washington to send some people to third countries where they have few or no ties.

Al Jazeera reported from Palenque, in southern Mexico, that three Cuban men in their 70s have lived there since December after being removed from the US. Ricardo Scull Delgado, Ernesto Perez Chapman and Lazaro Diaz Garcia all arrived in the US in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, when about 125,000 Cubans left the island for Florida.

Scull Delgado told Al Jazeera that the men were put on a bus in Arizona and driven for three days before being left in Palenque, near Mexico’s border with Guatemala. He said he had lived in California, married a US citizen and had children and grandchildren in the US before immigration agents detained him during a routine check-in.

Scull Delgado said he had served prison time for a crime committed in the 1990s and had not been in further trouble afterward. He told Al Jazeera he was about a month from retirement when he was arrested, and said the deportation separated him from his family and the life he had built over decades.

Al Jazeera also reported the case of Orlando Martinez Mendoza, a 48-year-old Cuban deported in 2025. Martinez Mendoza said US authorities detained him at a court appearance in Tennessee related to a speeding charge, moved him through several detention centers and later held him at a facility set up at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola.

The US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment. The department has listed Martinez Mendoza on a site publicizing immigration arrests, citing a 2018 cocaine-selling conviction and a deportation order after he served two years in prison.

Questions over Mexico removals

Human Rights Watch researcher Alcira Silva Hava told Al Jazeera that many Cuban deportees sent to Mexico are older people who spent decades in the US. Her report said some had removal orders, often tied to criminal convictions, but those orders named Cuba rather than Mexico as the destination.

Hava said changing the country of removal without a hearing or chance to object violated due process. Her analysis estimated that 4,353 Cubans had been deported from the start of Trump’s second term through March 2026, including 27 percent with no criminal record and 16 percent with pending charges.

US government lawyers told a federal court in Massachusetts in a March 13 filing that about 6,000 Cuban nationals had been removed to Mexico over the previous year, Al Jazeera reported. The filing said Mexico had a standing unwritten arrangement with the US to accept Cuban nationals for removal.

Judge William Young questioned that claim in a March 25 order temporarily blocking one Cuban man’s transfer to Mexico. Young asked the government to explain the unwritten arrangement and what procedures had applied to the Cubans already sent there.

Mexico has repeatedly denied having a deportation deal with the US, according to Al Jazeera. The Trump administration has not publicly released an agreement with Mexico, though it has made deportation arrangements with more than 30 countries, including El Salvador and Eswatini.

In Palenque, the deported men are seeking asylum in Mexico, Al Jazeera reported. Until their applications are approved, they cannot legally work, obtain residency or access healthcare, and they must check in weekly at the local asylum office.

This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.