In another case of disillusionment among Trump voters, a Cuban-American immigration lawyer in Miami has voiced regret over his 2024 vote for President Trump after his cousin was deported to Cuba.
The lawyer, Ismael Labrador, runs a Miami practice that helps families try to stop relatives from being deported.
He was among the roughly 68 percent of Cuban-Americans in Florida who supported Trump in 2024, according to International Business Times, which first reported his account. His vote, Labrador said, was meant to be narrow in effect. “Personally, I voted for Trump because I wanted to get criminals out of the country,” he said. “We wanted to have a safe America.”
The enforcement that followed reached his own family.
Labrador said his cousin, who had no criminal record, was detained and deported to Cuba despite his efforts to stop it. “It’s hard when you’re fighting against a lot of resources,” he said. He described being caught off guard by how far the campaign extended: “I think we got blindsided by the administration,” adding plainly, “This isn’t what I voted for.”
He also described fear spreading among relatives who lack permanent legal status. “If you don’t have a Green Card in the United States, you may be a target,” Labrador said. “We have relatives living in fear right now; we’ve had relatives who have been deported back to Cuba, unfortunately.”
Labrador said immigration officers are now making arrests in settings that had long been treated as off-limits, including at schools, public transit stops, sporting events, and courthouses where immigrants had scheduled hearings. The surprise, for many Cubans, is partly rooted in the law: under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans who reached the United States had a distinct pathway to permanent residency that gave the community a measure of protection other migrants never had.
That protection is no longer a guarantee.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it is not making exceptions for Cubans and is pursuing everyone it considers to have violated U.S. immigration law. “If you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” the agency said in a statement connected to the removals.
The returns have been underway for more than a year. In September 2025, CNN reported that 161 Cuban men and women had been sent back to the island, with many described as visibly stunned that it was happening. CNN quoted a Cuban immigration official, Lt. Col. Lourdes Gil Robaina, who said those returning faced no particular difficulty: “They are Cuban. They go home, where their family is. They don’t have a problem with immigration to be reinserted into society.”
Labrador’s regret reflects a broader unease in his community, though not, so far, a political realignment.
A Florida International University survey released on October 27 found that 76 percent of Cuban-Americans in South Florida were strongly opposed to the deportation of Cubans without criminal records. At the same time, 68 percent of those surveyed said they still planned to vote Republican in November’s midterm elections — a gap that suggests discontent over the removals has not translated into a break with the party.
For now, Labrador is left representing other families facing what his own did, while describing a shift few in his community anticipated. “We never thought that he was going to go after everybody,” he said.
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Source: International Business Times
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