By José R. Cabañas Rodríguez on August 18, 2025
One of Donald Trump’s most immediate priorities during his first six months as president of the United States has been to carry out a kind of ethnic cleansing within the country, or rather social alienation or marginalization, which began markedly with measures taken against immigrants (legal or otherwise) and has continued with other sectors.
The approval of the so-called Big and Beautiful Bill (BBB) and the provisions of its 940 pages have created a greater divide between rich and poor. Millions of people will gradually lose access to social programs, both health and food-related, which have so far allowed them to cushion the impact of their low incomes or total lack thereof.
The support of broad sectors of the US student body for the Palestinian cause, in the face of Israel’s genocide, has been skillfully used to remove university administrators and expel students whose behavior had until now fit within the norms of so-called university autonomy. With the questioning of rectors, professors, and young leaders, content in subjects such as history or political thought has been vetoed, reducing space for positions that could be classified as center-left.
At the same time, steps have been taken not only to question scientific procedures that have contributed to human or environmental health, but also to defund important programs in these and other areas, which has meant the end of employment for thousands of scientists, who now imagine their future outside the country.
The supposed attacks on crime, with the deployment of federal troops to specific cities, have been concentrated in areas where politicians of African descent have been elected or where the population of African descent is in the majority. The same is true of the slums that temporarily house the nearly half a million people in that country who do not own or rent a home.
Trump’s election, both in 2016 and 2024, was based on the sale of a discourse that targeted a political class entrenched in the country’s decision-making mechanisms which, in his own words, did not represent the majority. The reality of his first term in office has already shown, and is now even more evident, that his actions are aimed at favoring a very specific and minority sector of the population.
A large number of confessed criminals, blue-collar and white-collar offenders, and even some who have not yet reached the end of their trials, have been pardoned for not serving their sentences, but it has already been announced that these pardons will be reversed. The courts at almost all levels have been filled with judges who, beyond having a penchant for Republican priorities, are forming a brotherhood of protectors of Trumpism.
Since its founding, the United States has been a country with a critical coexistence between minorities and social groups, in a social disorder imposed by the wealthiest minority. What is new is that polarization has become more critical between these groups, and it is almost a state policy to generate chaos among them to distract attention from the real government agenda.
When you watch local television reports showing verbal and physical attacks by neighbors against each other in a small, remote town, simply because they speak a second language, oppose abortion, or believe that men and women are born equal, you are reminded of events such as the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
The United States is by birth a multicultural country, and its vast geography was quickly filled with settlers thanks to massive migrations. But the current rejection is not directed against groups such as the Scots, Italians, or Caucasians, but against those who are most dispossessed, who have no guarantees of security or protection, and who come from countries considered inferior in Trump’s multilateral logic.
This reality is reflected in different ways in specific states, cities, regions, or communities. Suddenly, having a name of Arab descent is almost a veto for holding elected office in certain places, even though the White House itself is home to bureaucrats who, either themselves or their ancestors, arrived yesterday afternoon from various corners of the world. Any Hispanic surname could have links to a drug cartel, ignoring the fact that the business exists because of high Anglo-Saxon domestic demand.
Among Cubans living in the United States, this new atmosphere has brought its own storms.
For more than sixty years, Cuban migration from the island has been treated very differently from other origins, both to deprive Cuban society of its main human resources and to damage the image of the revolutionary process. The percentage of Cubans living abroad, compared to the population of the island, has been presented as unique, without looking at the statistics of many countries that are listed as developed and are part of the so-called West.
Dozens of Florida state politicians and others who have achieved federal renown have tied the origins of their careers to the strength of “escaping communism.” Similarly, almost their entire “legislative” agenda has been focused on offering guarantees to new arrivals and ensuring that this migratory flow can be maintained indefinitely. Legislators of Cuban origin build their speeches and their ancestry by referring more to the “regime on the island” than to the urban layout of the cities where they live.
And then Trump comes along and changes all the references. If you are a purebred Republican, you have to be anti-immigrant without reservation or half measures; there will be no privileged groups (in principle) above others.
In a matter of seconds, these Cuban-born figures have had to make a 180-degree turn in their speeches and actions. Immigration, which until now had been blessed, is demonized. A new narrative must be invented to justify that at least some of the Cubans living there must be sent back. And the big question is, how to differentiate them?
The extensive literature that has studied the issue of Cuban migration has described the arrival of Cubans in the United States after 1959 in different waves of migration.
The first to arrive on January 1 of that year were representatives or sympathizers of the Batista regime who had committed various crimes or illegal acts while in power. Some would label them ideologically and disguise them as “fighters against communism,” but we are referring to high-profile criminals who were even on file with US intelligence services for their links to transnational mafia groups.
From then on, there were events such as “Operation Peter Pan,” the “divine exodus,” the so-called “freedom flights,” the “Mariel bridge,” the “rafters,” the normalization of migration, and the de-normalization of our times.
How can we establish an order of priority that determines who is welcome and who is not? Who can stay and who cannot?
The division of migration policy toward Cubans was immediately seen as a betrayal by the supposed representatives of that social group. Purebred Republicans with ample financial resources paid for posters to be put up in downtown Miami labeling them “Traitors.”
The response of the “offended” was swift, using the same technique as the supreme Trump: distracting attention.
The three Cuban-born representatives to the House from Florida found a Solomonic solution to their crisis: attack those they consider “sympathizers of the regime,” who at some point abandoned their official responsibilities in Cuba and migrated to the United States for various reasons. Lists began to appear and the guillotines were sharpened. There was talk of hundreds, even thousands, of possible targets for deportation.
Broad and narrow interpretations of the category “regime sympathizer” were generated. At one extreme, anyone who ever wore a military uniform or held a political office at the municipal, provincial, or national level was included; at the other extreme, even those who once wore a school scarf or donated blood to the CDR were listed.
As part of the attack, a telescopic sight was used to accentuate the targeting of a special category: anyone who had ever advocated for rapprochement between the two sides, or studied the phenomenon and argued that the majority of Cubans living in the United States did not support a hostile policy toward their country of origin. The chaos had to be exploited to demonize such people or institutions.
Many scholars and social activists have explained to Americans and Cubans living on the island that Miami is not Hialeah, nor is it Coral Gables or Brickwell, much less the “beach” or the “keys.” Cuban migration is a much more diverse phenomenon than what is being portrayed.
But if one wishes to find categories of possible deportees according to US law itself, it is striking that these guerrillas in the corridors of Capitol Hill did not choose names from the following classifications:
– Those who have caused terror and death among the so-called “dissident voices of exile,” as was the case with Carlos Muñiz Varela.
– All CIA operatives who went rogue and participated in the assassination plot against President John F. Kennedy, or climbed the stairs of the Watergate scandal.
– Those who kidnapped minors to be taken out of Cuba without the consent of any of their parents.
– All those who participated in the illegal removal of migrants from Cuba and left part of their “cargo” on uninhabitable islets, or simply abandoned them to their fate on the high seas.
– Those who have made a fortune from human trafficking in Central America, who have never been held accountable for those who did not complete the journey.
– Those wanted by Interpol for drug trafficking.
– Those who have forged foreign documents so that Indian or Serbian citizens can benefit from the so-called “Cuban Adjustment Act.”
– Those who have conspired with thousands of new arrivals to defraud Medicare or Medicaid.
– Those who have speculated on the sweat of the Cuban working class living in South Florida, charging high rents for rooms or residences that are not justified.
– Those who once sold insurance policies that could never be collected.
– Those who support the suspension of regular flights or the legal transfer of remittances in order to charge high fees for the delivery of parcels between family members.
– Those who have fabricated false résumés to gain access to public or private positions that are above their intelligence quotient.
– Those who falsify records to present themselves as heirs to non-existent properties in Cuba and who prevent or hinder US investment in the island.
One could rightly add that there are sufficient reasons to consider a person with a “negative background” and a candidate for deportation those who participated in terrorist activities against Cuba or against third parties. This sample is still significant.
But the attacks against people and institutions of Cuban origin these days are intended to achieve yet another distraction.
During the weeks when Elon Musk and his well-known Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were opening files, calculating results, and measuring the performance of federal programs, the Cuban American conga was dancing with great frenzy.
Imagine a sixth-generation Anglo-Saxon educated at Princeton asking an Equis Pérez to explain the concrete results of the investment of hundreds (possibly thousands) of millions of dollars from the US federal budget in the industry of overthrowing the “Cuban regime.” There is no answer beyond generating more poverty in Cuba, which in turn produces more migratory flow, which, BEWARE, King Trump detests.
These Cuban Americans with a very special nose have been left off their lists of possible deportees many former members of the 2506 Brigade, former CIA operatives, former directors of countless “regime change” projects, and other special populations who today have a completely different position from the one they held then and who agree that they were used for spurious purposes without tangible results.
For now, there is tension among Cubans in the cafeteria of the Versalles restaurant, in the lines for jobs at agencies such as Job R Us, at any gas station in Monroe County, in the parking lots of Lincoln-Martí elementary schools, on social media, or in those Miami Beach restaurants where newly arrived comedians go to offer incomprehensible jokes in English.
When the Trump storm passes, the vast majority of the Cuban ghetto will once again realize that it was used by a minority that has lived off their backs and still intends to reproduce itself.
Jose Cabanas, foto: Bill Hackwell
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English