'I love Trump but don't think it's fair': Pro-Trump Cubans revolt against White House

A number of pro-Trump Cuban Americans are revolting against the White House’s immigration policy after their own lives have been uprooted by President Donald Trump’s travel ban on Cuba, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

One such Cuban American is Arely Díaz Leal, a resident of Tampa, Florida, who close to a decade ago applied for her son to be allowed to immigrate to the United States. Leal’s son has still not been granted a visa, and following the Trump administration’s travel ban on Cuba – purportedly implemented to protect the United States from terrorism – her prospects of reuniting with her son have grown even less likely.

“I love Trump,” said Leal, who voted for Trump in 2024, speaking with the Post. “But I don’t think it’s fair.”

While not explicitly pro-Trump, another Cuban American pushing back against the White House is Leymi Reyes Figueredo, who immigrated legally from Cuba to Miami, Florida in 2022, but left her now 15-year-old daughter behind. Having planned to reunite in Miami this year, Figeredo was left devastated after learning in August that her daughter’s visa had been denied.

“I understand why you have to protect the country, [but] how is a child a terrorist?” Figueredo said, speaking with the Post.

The United States has historically granted special treatment to Cuban immigrants, granting them “preferential treatment unlike that afforded to any other immigrant or refugee group” such as “immediate access to federal safety-net benefits,” a policy critics have dubbed “Cuban privilege,” motivated in large part due to U.S. efforts to undermine the Cuban government.

The United States has been hostile toward the Cuban government since the overthrowing the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, who permitted Cuba to become what Australian history resource Alpha History dubbed a “virtual slave state,” allowing its resources and infrastructure to be largely “owned by American companies.”

However, that special treatment appears to have come to an end under the second Trump administration, leading to not only a revolt of sorts among some pro-Trump Cuban Americans, but lawsuits, including one filed by Juan Jesús Rodríguez Rojas, whose daughter and grandson were denied visas due to Trump’s travel ban.

That lawsuit faltered, however, after some Cuban Americans were torn between wanting to push back against the ban and their admiration for Trump.

“I expected a lot of Cubans to participate in this lawsuit,” said Curtis Morrison, Rojas’ attorney who filed the lawsuit on his behalf. “At the end of the day, they were just: ‘No, we don’t want to sue Trump.’”