Maray and Yoan, the love story torn apart by Trump’s deportations

One day before Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president, Maray Rojas already knew that her future was not in the United States. On Sunday, January 19, the 49-year-old Cuban woman made a very strange move, given her immigration status: she crossed the bridge that connects Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, but from north to south. This was in the opposite direction being taken by the majority of migrants.

While hundreds of undocumented people were rushing to cross the border before the Republican took office, Rojas returned with her suitcase to Mexico. There, she had a job. Her marriage was also registered in Mexico. She was only missing one thing: her husband, Yoan Vicente Pichardo.

They had both crossed into the United States together, via the CBP One asylum program. However, he had been detained by the U.S. border patrol. The authorities then refused to return him to Mexico, despite the fact that he had permanent resident status there. On January 25, on Trump’s first deportation flights, Yoan was taken back to Cuba in handcuffs.

It was 2016 when Yoan, a carpenter by profession, decided to leave Cuba. He was 40 at the time. His journey ended in the state of Tabasco, in southern Mexico, where he stayed to work. He managed to establish himself and send money to Maray. He even obtained permanent residency status in Mexico. With his papers in order, he crossed the country to Ciudad Juárez. Then, he crossed into the United States and began a process under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a procedure that allows some Cubans to obtain permanent residency. But the U.S. didn’t turn out to be what he expected, so he decided to return to Mexico. He stayed in Ciudad Juárez and sent for Maray, so that they could live together along the border. In April of 2023, she arrived in Juárez, where they got married and started a life. Yoan worked in a carpentry workshop and Maray in a crafts store.

Time passed. And Maray had a thorn in her side: she was far away from her two daughters, who live in Florida. It was the desire to be close to them that led the couple to request asylum via the CBP One program. They got their appointment on November 13, 2024. But after crossing into El Paso via the Paso del Norte international bridge, they were immediately separated. Since then, they haven’t seen each other. Maray was released the same afternoon in the border city, but Yoan was detained and sent to a detention center in Otero County, New Mexico. Apparently, he had to go through an immigration process that was still open since his previous entry.

Maray then settled for two months in Santa Teresa, on the New Mexico border with Texas, very close to El Paso and Juárez. “I don’t know, the people who say that it’s the country of freedom… what freedom [are they talking about]? There, the word you hear constantly is ‘deportation, deportation, deportation.’ [In the U.S.], immigrants are always in limbo,” Maray tells EL PAÍS, while sitting in the living room of her house in downtown Juárez. “I also don’t understand why they call it ‘the American dream.’ Well, I guess because you go to bed sleepy and you wake up sleepy, because you have to work two or three jobs to survive. There, they charge you even for a smile,” the woman scoffs.

For more than two months, no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to get the U.S. immigration authorities to release Yoan. He insisted that they send him to Juárez — because that was where he lived — but they refused.

“I couldn’t live like that. The United States is a country where you walk around and you’re afraid that they’re going to arrest you,” Maray sighs. She compares it to her life in Ciudad Juárez, one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico: “I’ve never had a problem here and I can walk around freely. Here, it’s like being in Cuba, with the door to my house wide open. [In the U.S.], it’s a country of closed doors.” On January 19, Maray didn’t wait any longer and crossed the border, heading back to her house: “Once I crossed the bridge, when I was in Mexico, I felt like I’d been born again.”

On January 20, she spoke to Yoan on the phone. He told her that he was requesting his voluntary departure to Mexico. But on Tuesday, January 21, he was sent to a detention center in Louisiana. From there, he was sent to Miami. On January 25 — after a few days with no communication — Yoan arrived in Cuba. With his hands and feet shackled, he got off a plane that was full of repatriated people.

For Pablo Zúñiga — a lawyer at the organization Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA), translated as “Integral Human Rights in Action” — the separation of this family is a very unusual case, but one that can be repeated or extended, due to Mexico’s position of not receiving people of other nationalities. “We’ve even found that the asylum application processes before [Mexico’s] National Migration Institute are [not resulting in visas being issued], which would allow people to work and move around the country while they wait for their process to obtain residency to be resolved,” Zúñiga notes.

Now, Yoan is in Cuba, waiting for a passport to be able to leave the island and return to Mexico, where he maintains his residency status. The couple has calculated that they need between 80,000 and 100,000 Mexican pesos (between $4,000 and $5,000) to bring him back into the country. Both husband and wife were born in Camagüey, but Yoan no longer has family in Cuba. He’s staying with one of Maray’s sisters, while she works to save up money for his return.

Before migrating, Maray worked for almost 20 years in the Cuban sugar industry, testing the sugarcane that was set to be processed. For a fortnight of work, she received only 250 Cuban pesos, or a little more than $10 today. Currently, a box of eggs in Cuba costs around 3,000 pesos.

“We [were able] to eat [thanks to] the family we had outside the country, but there are no essential foodstuffs [on the island] and there’s no way of obtaining it by working in Cuba,” she laments. These are the struggles that Yoan now has to go through: he’s unable to find a job that could help him save up money to return to his wife. His partner notes that the carpenter feels “desperate” and “frustrated.”

In Mexico, Maray is waiting for him. The door to her apartment is open, so that the sun and the air can come in. “I’m not moving from here,” she vows. “Not anymore.”

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