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As she courted South Florida voters, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon said Cubans had been a target of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Cuban-Americans largely supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“Donald Trump is the deporter in chief and we have witnessed him deporting over 13,000 Cubans since he has been in office, his first term and his second term,” Nixon told Jim DeFede, host of CBS News Miami’s “Facing South Florida” Oct. 4.
Nixon, a state House member, is running to unseat Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, who was appointed to fill the seat Marco Rubio vacated when he became secretary of state.
The Trump administration is seeking to deport immigrants, including Cubans, during his second term as he continues to push his mass deportation promise.
During Trump’s first term, the government deported about 3,400 Cubans, according to Office of Homeland Security Statistics data. PolitiFact asked the Department of Homeland Security how many Cubans it has deported during Trump’s second term, but it did not say. Neither DHS nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s websites report the data.
But Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization that tracks and investigates human rights abuses, provided data that shows Nixon’s figure is close. As of Aug. 5, the U.S. has deported about 8,500 Cubans during Trump’s second term, the group’s senior adviser Brian Root said. It’s possible more Cubans have been deported since August.
The organization based its figure on ICE data released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy’s Deportation Data Project.
We reached out to Nixon’s campaign for comment, but we didn’t receive a response.
Human Rights Watch estimates of Cubans deported to Mexico
In May, Human Rights Watch reported that from Jan. 20, 2025, to March 9, 2026, U.S. authorities deported more than 18,000 people to countries they aren’t from; nearly 13,000 were sent to Mexico. Of the 13,000, about 4,400 were Cubans.
The report says many of the Cubans Human Rights Watch interviewed were 60 years old and older who had lived in the U.S. for decades, mainly in Florida. Some had arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift or in the 1990s, fleeing the Cuban government or for economic reasons.
Part of the number tracks back to third-country deportation agreements the Trump administration has signed with over 35 countries.
The U.S. government has also sent Cubans to Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana and Eswatini.
Why are more Cubans being deported?
Historically, Cubans haven’t been a primary target of U.S. deportation policy.
The Trump administration ended a Biden administration parole program that let Cubans and other immigrants vetted by the U.S. government enter the country if they were sponsored by someone living in the U.S. As the program ended, so did immigrants’ parole-based employment authorizations, leading the administration to deport some of them.
The Cuban government generally has refused to accept deportees who previously committed crimes in Cuba or in the U.S., said Michael J. Bustamante, associate professor of history and the Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. He said this group of people has been in limbo, and the Trump administration has particularly targeted them for deportation to countries they aren’t from.
“It wasn’t a protection on paper. In theory, they always had pending orders of deportation, but there was kind of an inertia there,” Bustamante said. “We’re talking people who’ve been in the country for 30-plus years or 40-plus years who never thought that they would be sent anywhere. And this administration is finding ways to ship them out of the country.”
Even though deportations of Cubans aren’t new, what’s different is the Trump administration’s pace in arresting and deporting them, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an immigration studies expert at George Mason University. She said people with pending cases and at immigration check-ins have been arrested. The end of parole and the deportations to other countries such as Mexico has also changed things for Cubans.
Our ruling
Nixon said Trump has deported “over 13,000 Cubans since he has been in office, his first term and his second term.”
Trump deported about 3,400 Cubans during his first term, government data shows. DHS did not confirm to PolitiFact how many Cubans have been deported during Trump’s second term. But Human Rights Watch estimated about 8,500 Cubans have been deported. That brings the figure close to 12,000, based on the best estimates up to Aug. 5. It’s possible more have been deported since then.
The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
PolitiFact Staff Writer Samantha Putterman contributed to this report.