The De-Documented

When Ricardo and Yuli crossed the border in October of last year, they had the permission of the United States government. The couple’s petition to apply for asylum was granted following an interview at a Texas border crossing. After handling the required paperwork, the couple moved to Houston and received official work permits. Ricardo — who had run an informal taxi service in Havana — hoped to become a truck driver. In Houston, he acquired his U.S. drivers’ license, a used Honda, and began studying for the commercial trucking license exam. He and Yuli took jobs at a local car wash to make ends meet in the short-term.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the status of more than 900,000 people who had been vetted at the border for valid asylum claims by DHS personnel. Ricardo and Yuli were among them. Without papers and work permits, they were promptly fired from the car wash. The life they had been planning for over a year was suddenly cast into doubt.

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The cancellation of these parole statuses was one of 181 executive actions that President Donald Trump issued in his first 100 days in office related to immigration and border enforcement. Another of those executive orders hit Ricardo’s plans especially hard: In May, Trump signed a law requiring all truck-driving license applicants to pass a rigorous English fluency test. Experts warn that the order could impede commerce, as hundreds of thousands of new truck drivers are needed, and the majority of that labor market speaks Spanish.

In March, the Office of Refugee Resettlement — which during the Biden years offered small monthly payments to Cubans and Haitians entering the asylum process — said it no longer had enough money to continue the program, and the checks stopped coming. On the campaign trail, Trump had attacked the program as part of his deceptive narrative that the Biden administration was giving thousands of dollars to people in the country “illegally.” But the program was a lifeline for Ricardo and Yuli. They spent their first $300 check on 10-kilo bags of beans and rice at Costco, not realizing that they would not need to stockpile like they had in Cuba, where they endured constant and severe food insecurity, as well as rolling blackouts. 

“We had no idea what to get, so we just got everything,” said Yuli.

The vast majority of asylum seekers who have lost their legal status are people who navigated the immigration system “the right way,” following the legal pathways created by previous administrations. Ricardo and Yuli entered the country from Mexico using the CBP One app, a phone application created by Customs and Border Protection, which was the only way to seek asylum in the United States between June 2024 and January 2025, when Trump cancelled the program, shutting off the asylum system entirely. The cancellation of the app left tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Mexico.

In April, the Trump administration began encouraging the 900,000 people who had entered the U.S. using the CBP One app to self-deport. That’s when Ricardo and Yuli lost their work permits. In May, a member of Ricardo and Yuli’s CBP One group, who had crossed the border with them in October 2024, received an email from Customs and Border Protection informing them, “It’s time for you to abandon the United States,” and warning him that he was at risk of deportation if he chose not to return to Cuba voluntarily. The email included a link to a new app, CBP Home, where immigrants are offered $1,000 to self-deport. They are told to report to a facility, where they will then be transported to an airport and flown to their home countries. So far, only 5,000 people have self-deported using this method as of May, despite the program’s $200 million ad campaign.

Since the email was sent only to the leader of the group, not to Ricardo and Yuli, they were not sure whether it applied to them. They felt the “confusion and dread” that the American Immigration Council says is the characteristic response to the Trump administration’s executive orders.

“This is just one example of the administration making attempts to not only revoke lawful status from people who likely obtained it following all of the U.S. governance procedures, but also to prejudice them in unprecedented and discriminatory ways, barring them from applying for or receiving any form of relief for which they very well may be eligible,” said Hannah Flamm, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Without a work permit, Ricardo and Yuli were forced to look for clandestine employment at factories that pay hourly wages of between $8 and $11. On the assembly line, packaging cosmetics or food products, workers are not allowed to talk to one another and are fired on the spot if they speak during their 10-hour shifts. “I’ve worked more in the past nine months than I worked in the rest of my 52 years combined,” Yuli said. Many of the factory employees are migrants in the same position, including several pregnant women who have decided, without any other option, to keep working until they go into labor.

Yuli says the couple also faces pressure from family back home, who continue to suffer through an economic crisis and need remittances to live. The couple, like most asylum-seekers, never dreamed of coming to the United States, but felt they had no other option to ensure the well-being of their family. Yuli saved enough to buy her mother a solar-powered generator, which cost more than $1,000, to use during extended blackouts. “They ask why we aren’t giving them money every month, but I tell them first I need to figure out how to survive here,” Yuli said.

Since losing their parole status, both Ricardo and Yuli have questioned their decision to leave Cuba. Yuli still believes she made the right choice; Ricardo regrets the migration. But even if he wanted to go back, Ricardo has sold his house and car to pay for the journey, so he would be returning to an inferior life. “I would return home to nothing,” he said.

The couple’s best hope is the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which in theory allows them to obtain a green card after being in the U.S. for one year. However, the couple will need to attend other check-ins with authorities, as part of the asylum process this summer, and both worry they could be intercepted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported before they have a chance to get a green card.

For the past month, ICE has been under increasing pressure to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day. This demand has led to a shift in policy, in which ICE officers are targeting people with no criminal records and who are easier to find. Because people who entered the country using the CBP One app have been tracked previously through government programs, their whereabouts are already known to the DHS. ICE agents wait outside courthouses to arrest asylum seekers who have lost their parole status and other undocumented immigrants, immediately placing them in expedited removal proceedings, deported without any opportunity to appeal the decision or any legal representation.

Since May, dozens of people who entered the U.S. using the CBP One app have been arrested by ICE agents after routine court appearances across the country. Through a loophole, even when a judge moves to dismiss a deportation order against an immigrant, ICE agents can still arrest the immigrant after the hearing and put them into expedited removal proceedings. It’s a Catch-22: fail to show up at a hearing out of fear of an ICE arrest, face an automatic deportation order; show up and get snatched off the street and deported immediately. Ricardo and Yuli have begun to expect deportation one way or the other, unless they are able to acquire green cards prior to their asylum hearing.

“ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. She did not mention the fact that many of these migrants had legal status in the United States and entered the country through valid legal processes, before their rights were stripped by Trump administration regulations.

“The Trump administration is dead set on forcing out members of our community, indiscriminately [and] without regard for the law,” Flamm said. “The notion that certain people or policies are above the law is devastating to the United States as we know it.”

Exhausted by anxiety and toil, Ricardo and Yuli limit themselves to their apartment, the supermarket and the factory. “This is not what we imagined at all,” said Yuli. “But we’re here and we have no other choice.”