[Trump] has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government. That is about double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. And in the years that Mr. Trump has been president, he has sent more Cubans back than his three predecessors.
Families, businesses and communities that once felt removed from or immune to immigration enforcement now must face it head-on. Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state’s proud Cuban identity, turning older immigrants against newer ones.
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You know, I realized after I wrote all that about Rubio that, under the new policies, Desi Arnaz would have been in line for deportation. No lie. Desi Arnaz (of I Love Lucy fame) was a Cuban-American who came from wealth, emigrated to the US with nothing, then made it big.
I don’t know if he ever got citizenship but he was uber-patriotic about his adopted home, and worked throughout WWII and a while afterward for the USO entertaining troops and getting starlets to visit wounded GIs in the hospital.
Unfortunately, later he was also arrested a couple of times for drunk and disorderly back in the 60s, at the height of his fame.
Desi fucking Arnaz. Everyone my age (I’m old) and plenty of others remember when he was literally iconic. There was never a bigger flag waver, never a better illustration of the now-long-gone “American Dream,” and he’d be the first to preach it.
But now they’d just deport him, without even letting him grab his ID to prove his legal status. Blows my goddamn mind.