For thirty years, Julio Varona has built a life in Central Florida, enjoying the special status allowed to Cuban immigrants even though the U.S. government had a standing order to deport him.<\/p>\n
Only now, amid high-level talks and heightened tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, does his deportation seem likely to happen \u2014 and advocates worry thousands more Cuban immigrants may be forced to go too, despite deteriorating conditions on the island.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what is going to happen to me once I get there,\u201d Varona said in Spanish.<\/p>\n
![\"Julio](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/tos-l-cfl-cubans0540.jpg\")
Julio Varona shows his ankle monitor, near his Dunnellon, Fla. residence, on Monday, March 23, 2026. Varona is a Cuban immigrant who has been in the U.S. for over a decade, but is now getting ready for deportation early in April. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda\/ Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n
Cuban immigrants in Florida, once among the most legally privileged in the U.S., may be forced to relinquish their unique protections and pushed to the forefront of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdowns, lawyers and advocates say. Because of his criminal record, Varona could be forced into an early wave of deportees, but there is no reason to think the effort will stop there.<\/p>\n
But amid the changes here, many in Central Florida\u2019s Cuban community of more than 80,000 believe the communist government is at a \u201cbreaking point,\u201d producing a mixture of dread and hope about the possibility of returning home. A U.S.-imposed oil blockade is putting increasing pressure on the island\u2019s leadership, and offering a promise of the transformation in leadership many have longed to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cChange is coming,\u201d said Mel Martinez, a Cuban-American former U.S. senator and Orange County mayor who lives in Orlando. \u201cIt\u2019s a brutal way to do it, by denying them fuel they need to run a country, but it\u2019s the only way they seem to think about this in a way that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varona, an opponent of the island\u2019s communist government, filed onto a makeshift raft alongside a handful of others in the 1990s, risking his life and sailing across the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to reinvent his life in Florida. He arrived amid the so-called \u201cwet foot, dry foot\u201d federal policies at the time, which allowed Cubans \u2014 uniquely among all migrants \u2014 legal status in the U.S. upon stepping onto American soil.<\/p>\n
His journey was similar to that of many other Cubans.<\/p>\n
Martinez left Cuba alone at the age of 16 in 1962 before reuniting with his parents in Orlando, arriving under then-President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s policy to welcome Cubans fleeing the Castro regime.<\/p>\n
Johnson signed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966, a landmark federal law that allowed Cubans in the U.S. for at least one year to apply for a green card. The act still applies today for certain Cubans, but in 2022, following a court decision, the Department of Homeland Security began to hamper recent Cuban arrivals\u2019 ability to qualify.<\/p>\n
Now, Martinez said, \u201cThat situation has changed pretty dramatically, and now it\u2019s not easy to come and impossible to enter the U.S. Even more concerning than that is any deportations that might be sending people back to Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court case and the DHS decision signaled a changing tide for Cuban immigrants, said Juan Carlos Gomez, an immigration lawyer and law professor at Florida International University and part of the university\u2019s Cuban Research Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much that Cubans were privileged, it was more that there was a quirk in the diplomatic, political and historical situation,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cIt\u2019s a different world now.\u201c<\/p>\n
Last month the Department of Homeland Security announced 170 Cubans with criminal records had been sent back, marking the first deportations of the year to an island that historically has rejected such deportees. As the situation has evolved, though, the island has become more open to their return.<\/p>\n
Varona will likely be on one of those flights next month. In 2000, he was sentenced to 10 years of probation for sexual battery of a minor, but the judge withheld adjudication, meaning he was not formally convicted. He had pleaded not guilty at the time and maintains his innocence now, but in 2001 an immigration judge ordered his removal.<\/p>\n
He was released from ICE custody a few months later and checked in with the agency annually, but was never deported in part because Cuba would not take him. Finally in December, following his regular check-in with ICE in Orlando, Varona left the office with an ankle monitor tracking his movement and was told to prepare for deportation in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try not to tell my mother about any of this, because she\u2019s 82 and she\u2019s already worried about me going back,\u201d Varona said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to give her a heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
The island he would return to is different than the one he left over two decades ago. Its population of roughly 10 million is reeling from nationwide blackouts, a financial crisis, food and medicine shortages and garbage pileups amid the U.S.-imposed oil blockade.<\/p>\n
![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Cuba_The_Two_Castros_75643-1.jpg\")
Cuba\u2019s President Miguel Diaz-Canel holds up a Cuban flag as he watches the May Day parade next to Raul Castro, second from right, and Raul Castro\u2019s grandson, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, at Revolution Square in Havana, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa, File)<\/p>\n