JUAREZ, Mexico _ The hotel charged by the hour, but the two young Cubans _ dirty, hungry and dazed after being released from detention in the United States and pushed back into Mexico _ had nowhere else to go.
The pair and some fellow Cubans detained with them pooled a few crumpled pesos that U.S. officials had returned in Ziploc bags along with notices to appear in court. Together, they crowded into an upstairs room with a single dirty mattress at the Hotel Sevilla.
They may wait six months to see a U.S. immigration judge just across the border in El Paso. And they face narrowing odds under President Donald Trump that they'll be allowed to stay in the United States.
Trump has returned to Cold War-era policies against Cuba, reversing his predecessor's rapprochement with the government in Havana. But, in contrast with decades of bipartisan U.S. policy, administration officials not only no longer welcome Cubans to the United States, but are also pushing them out, forcing them back to Mexico and ramping up deportations to the island.
In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the U.S. deported 64 Cubans. Last year, the Trump administration deported 463. This year, officials are on pace to deport around 560. The number of Cubans showing up at the southern border without prior permission to enter, categorized as "inadmissibles" by Customs and Border Protection, has continued to mount, with more than 20,000 expected to seek entry this year.
The two young Cubans were among the first returned to Mexico in June under an expansion of a policy that had already required thousands of Central Americans to go back across the border while their asylum cases were proceeding in the United States. They insisted on remaining anonymous, fearful of harming their asylum cases, or putting themselves and their families in danger. Most Cuban asylum-seekers have relatives in the U.S. and are prime targets for kidnapping and extortion in dangerous Mexican border cities like Juarez.
The two had arrived in Juarez on separate buses, the end of a journey begun with a plane flight to Nicaragua. At the advice of smugglers, both headed directly to the viaduct marking the U.S.-Mexico border and easily crossed the trickling Rio Grande, immediately turning themselves in and claiming asylum with U.S. Border Patrol agents waiting on the other side.
They thought they'd be allowed to stay.
"The coyote told us he'd get us into the U.S.," said one, a 24-year-old from Bayamo, Cuba, "but it wasn't correct."
"It was all a lie," interjected the other, a 19-year-old from Villa Clara who said his father was a U.S. citizen. U.S. officials overseeing their detention misled them, too, he added, telling them they'd be released in the U.S.
His father first applied to sponsor him to come to the United States eight years ago, he said. But now that he's no longer a minor, "he says this is the only way."
"They changed the laws as we were coming," the first young man said heavily. "It was very bad luck for us."
