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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico: José Manuel Maranillo, a Cuban asylum seeker stranded in Mexico by President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, was distraught when he learned that his brother-in-law in Florida had voted for the Republican.
“Imagine it!” he exclaimed on Wednesday (November 4) while working as a fruit and vegetable vendor in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez.
“I am part of his family! I feel terrible that he voted for Trump because we are stuck here in Juárez waiting for (Joe) Biden to win so he can help us and Latinos in the United States too,” he said.
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On Tuesday, a wave of support from the greater Cuban-American community in Florida helped Trump achieve a narrow but decisive victory in the key state of the battlefield.
But Cuban asylum seekers stranded in Mexico under the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies are praying for Democrat Biden to win domestically, and more than half a dozen Cubans told Reuters they are upset, though not at all. surprised, that their relatives and compatriots supported Trump. in a critical state of oscillation.
“They only think about the benefits to them if Trump wins, and nothing else,” said Dairon Elisondo, a Cuban doctor and asylum seeker who works in a refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, across the river from Brownsville, Texas.
Roberto Vasbon, a Cuban migrant under the “Remain in Mexico” program, works at a butcher shop in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on November 4, 2020, while he awaits his immigration hearing in the United States. (Photo: Reuters / Jose Luis Gonzalez)
Elisondo said he opposes the Cuban government like his Cuban compatriots in Miami, but said Trump’s aggressive stance against Havana should not outweigh the sum of his other policies, including the anti-asylum programs that have forced thousands of Latin Americans to seek the United States. refuge to wait for the process in Mexico, instead of in the United States.
“It is true that the Trump administration has pushed the Cuban government against the wall, and that is why Cubans support it, but we cannot just consider this issue and ignore the hundreds of bad things it has done,” said Elisondo, who said he is disappointed. of his Cuban friends who voted for Trump.
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Republican party officials and political analysts say the Trump campaign effort to label Biden a socialist, combined with the Trump administration’s hard-line policies on the Cuban government, attracted Cuban and Cuban-American voters.
Ludmina Cabello González, a Cuban migrant from the “Remain in Mexico” program, works in a butcher shop in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on November 4, 2020, while she awaits her immigration hearing in the United States. (Photo: Reuters / Jose Luis Gonzalez)
“In my case, it’s about what my family went through (in Cuba) and what we lost,” said Cuban-American Denise Gálvez, co-founder of Florida-based Latinas for Trump.
She said immigration was far from being a top voting issue for herself and her Cuban compatriots in the state.
“The priority became ‘we have to save our democracy,'” he said.
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Another Cuban-American Trump supporter in Florida, María Romero, said Trump’s stance toward Havana won her vote, even though she feels the plight of her compatriots.
“I am Cuban, so I don’t want him to kick other Cubans in the head,” he said.
Ludmina Cabello González and Roberto Vasbon, Cuban migrants from the “Remain in Mexico” program, pose for a photo at work in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on November 4, 2020, as they await their immigration hearing in the United States. (Photo: Reuters / Jose Luis Gonzalez)
But in Mexico, that’s exactly what the Florida results felt for some asylum seekers.
“With so many Cubans stranded here in Mexico, with the violence, with everything, it’s something I can’t understand,” said Ludmina Cabello González, a Cuban asylum seeker who works in a butcher shop in Ciudad Juárez.
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Yuri González, who has spent more than a year in Mexico waiting for his asylum applications to be processed in a United States court, said that changes in the country’s immigration policies towards Cubans have opened a sharp division among those who immigrated in a it was more welcoming. and the stranded in Mexico today.
“Many of them came to the United States on planes with visas,” he said.
In contrast, González said, he and his wife fled Cuba to Brazil and have traveled thousands of miles across the continent just to reach the US border.
“They didn’t cross borders or endure any of the difficult experiences I’ve had,” he said. “And those who did it, those who were attacked and extorted, have now forgotten.”
