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The tired faces of Cuban deportees to Mexico: ‘I’m already old, I don’t want to die here’

4 April 2026 at 04:00
William Herrera, Rolando Tito Vega and Jesús Gutiérrez Lima in Tapachula, Chiapas, on March 26.

Just a few weeks ago they were electricians in Miami. Or department managers at a multinational corporation. They were still fishing, just like they had for the last 30 years. They drove trucks. They owned an air conditioning company. They were collecting retirement benefits after a lifetime of work. And now? Now they look for a gap between the arcades, hang wet clothes to dry in a sink, open and close the doors of an Oxxo convenience store hoping for a few coins, celebrate the blankets that a kind neighbor gave them so they don’t have to sleep directly on the hard concrete floor, treasure worn papers, documents in the wrong language, and rely on promised money to buy a cell phone so they can call their families, who remained thousands of miles away, on the other side of the border.

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A group of Cubans deported to Mexico organize their documents in downtown Tapachula, Chiapas, on March 26.Arsenio Chirino was deported to Mexico while signing the revocation of his deportation order. He is pictured in Tapachula, Chiapas, on March 27.Rolando Tito Vega was deported to the Arizona-Mexico border.Juan Carlos Rodríguez, a chef, in Tapachula on March 27.William Herrera was arrested in court in October 2025 and transferred to Mexico.
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