Cuban immigrants say ‘Obama killed our dream’
Special status ends with change in Cuban policy
MEXICO CITY — Alexander Gutierrez Garcia left Cuba last August, beginning a treacherous journey up the spine of South and Central America in a quest to reach the United States.
Along the way, he was robbed, kidnapped and fell ill.
No matter. As a Cuban, Gutierrez, 36, knew all he had to do was reach the U.S. and he would be allowed to stay. No longer. On Thursday, President Barack Obama ordered an immediate end to a longstanding policy that granted residency to Cubans who set foot on American soil, leaving Gutierrez and thousands of other Cubans on their way to the U.S. in sudden limbo.
Some Cubans were mere steps from border entry points when the news came down, and began crying as Border Patrol agents turned them away.
They can now be deported, just like Salvadorans, Mexicans or any other immigrant attempting to enter the U.S. illegally without valid humanitarian or asylum claims.
“What can we do?” Gutierrez asked in a telephone interview from Costa Rica, his voice shaking. “Obama has killed our dream of living in freedom.”
Gutierrez has lived in Costa Rica since November, trying to regain his health and earn money for the next leg of his journey, which he planned to resume in a few weeks.
He has been getting paid under the table for work as a handyman and looked forward to the days when he had enough spare change to call home to Cuba. His wife and two daughters are there. A third daughter, from a previous marriage, lives in Texas.
Gutierrez’s dream was supposed to end there, in Texas, with a green card and the legal right to bring the rest of his family to join him. It was not supposed to end in Costa Rica, paying to live in a flophouse among strangers.
An evangelical pastor, Gutierrez said he left Cuba because of a lack of religious freedom on the island.
Although the communist government has widened its tolerance of some faiths, Gutierrez said it has cracked down on certain evangelical religions, in some cases destroying chapels.
This summer, Gutierrez kissed his wife and daughters goodbye as he and another pastor paid a smuggler to help them get to the U.S.
They were part of a wave of roughly 100,000 Cubans who have fled the island since 2014 out of fear that Cubans might lose their special immigration status amid waning tensions between the old Cold War adversaries.
Over 11 months ending in August, 38,573 Cubans showed up at the southwestern U.S. border without visas, according to federal statistics. That’s six times the number of Cubans who arrived in 2009.
For years, many Cubans traveled to Florida in rickety boats. If they landed on U.S. shores, they were allowed to stay. If intercepted at sea, they were sent back to Cuba, and the policy became known as “wet foot, dry foot.”
In recent years, though, more Cubans traveled by land. Gutierrez and his pastor friend ended up stranded in Panama City.
“That is how my calamity began,” Gutierrez said.
The two pastors had no choice but to go on to Guyana. Along the way, he said, they were kidnapped by highway thieves and robbed by rogue police officers who stole their phones, money and even eyeglasses.
“What I have learned on this journey is that there are good people and bad people,” Gutierrez said in an interview last fall.
Gutierrez and his friends managed to cross into Costa Rica, but Gutierrez didn’t think he was well enough to go on to Nicaragua, another notorious and lawless passage.
Gutierrez’s friends went on without him.
Gutierrez sees few options: ask for political asylum in Costa Rica, or return to Cuba.
He would never cross illegally into the U.S., he said, and though he could ask for asylum based on his religious beliefs, asylum claims are hard to win.
On Thursday and Friday, he stayed close to a wi-fi hot spot, scrolling for updates on the policy change. He messaged to panicked friends, also on their way to the U.S. but who have only made it to Panama or Peru.
He kept hoping he would find news articles saying President-elect Donald Trump vowed to overturn Obama’s decision.
Trump, he said, is the only hope for Cubans like him.
He still hasn’t called his family in Cuba to tell them what he plans to do next. It’s because, he said, he has absolutely no idea.
Gutierrez’s dream was supposed to end there in Texas, not in Costa Rica, paying to live in a flophouse among strangers.