‘It’s been brutal’: Cubans caught in crosshairs of Trump’s deportation push
When Rosaly Estévez “self-deported” from Miami to Havana last November, US immigration officers bid farewell by removing her ankle monitor. The 32-year-old had been told she was about to be detained, so she left with her three-year-old son, Dylan, a US citizen.
Heidy Sánchez, 43, wasn’t given a choice. She was forcibly removed from Florida last April but, worrying about Cuba’s failing healthcare system, she left her two-year-old daughter, Kaylin, behind with her American husband, Carlos.
“My little girl was still breastfeeding,” she said. “Waiting to get on the plane, my breasts were swollen, and I kept saying, ‘Kaylin must be hungry.’” Sánchez had struggled for years to conceive and Kaylin is her only child.
Neither woman has a criminal record, but both have been caught up in the US government’s push to deport Cuban immigrants. Now they each live in small towns south of the Cuban capital of Havana, passing their days talking to lawyers and family in the US.
“It’s been brutal,” said Estévez. “Imagine Dylan hugging his phone every night when he sees his dad. I wouldn’t wish this on any mother.”
As the US government heaps pressure on Cuba, cutting off access to its oil shipments, Donald Trump has framed the campaign as an effort to make the island safe for Cuban Americans.
“A lot of people that live in our country are treated very badly by Cuba,” Trump said recently. “They all voted for me, and we want them to be treated well. We’d like to be able to have them go back to a home in their country, where they haven’t seen their family, their country for many, many decades.”
The condemnation on Donald Trump and the racist video he posted on Truth Social depicting Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama as monkeys continues to trickle in Friday morning.
Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under Obama, called Trump “a stain on our history”.
“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” Rhodes said on X.
George Conway, the ex-husband of Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, reminded his followers that he had been calling Trump out over racism since 2019 and linked to an oped he wrote for the Washington Post titled: Trump Is A Racist President.
The post was still up almost eight hours later, alongside another post of a video that accused the Democratic Party of being anti-Black. Continuing on his social media spree in which he posted more than 60 times over the course of three hours, the president has once again begun posting to Truth Social about an hour ago.
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Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage.
Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The racist depiction of the Obamas – the first Black president and first lady in American history – appears at the end of a one-minute video perpetuating the false and disproven claims that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump. The company in 2023 settled for $787.5m with Fox News in a landmark defamation lawsuit.
For two seconds, the video shows the smiling faces of the Obamas superimposed on monkeys bobbing to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.
As of Friday morning, the video has been liked more than 2,500 times and reposted more than 1,100 times, as prominent Democrats decried the post.
“Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now,” said the press office of California governor Gavin Newsom, a longtime Trump critic and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.
“This is overt racism. Full stop. There’s no ‘misinterpretation’ and no excuse. This is who he is, who he’s always been, and why he should never be anywhere near power again,” political strategist Adam Parkhomenko posted on X.
The video was just one of more than 60 posts the president made on Truth Social over the course of three hours. In addition to repeating lies about the 2020 presidential election, Trump posted the Trump Accounts Super Bowl ad and calls to add his face to Mount Rushmore.
More to come.
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