Audio By Carbonatix
“Be careful what you wish for” might just be one of the oldest lessons in the book; it’s likely older than the 2,700-year-old King Midas myth that offers this insight. But some are still learning the hard way, like the scores of Republican Cubans in Florida who voted for President Donald Trump, only to find themselves on the business end of his deportation machine.
According to reporting by the New York Times, Trump is deporting Cubans from Florida in record numbers, booting more than 1,600 Cubans from the country in 2025 alone (more than double the number deported in 2024, the last year of President Joe Biden’s term). For many Cubans in Florida, the deportations come as a shock to a voting bloc that supported Trump’s return to power — despite his very clearly expressed will to head the largest deportation operation in United States history.
The revelation caused a firestorm of comments on a Reddit post this week.
“Damn leopards,” quipped one user, alluding to the famous tongue-in-cheek line feigning shock about a predator behaving like a predator.
“Did they think the leopards were only interested in Venezuelans?” another commented on the r/politics thread. “Did they think the leopards know the difference? Lol the leopards hate them all and call them all Mexicans, so good luck with that lifetime of subservience to Republicans.”
Some were quick to point out many being deported couldn’t vote if they weren’t citizens, “but their families did,” the commenter continued. “Their social circles did. And they supported this crap.”
A poll from Florida International University, conducted in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election, found 68 percent of Cuban-American voters in Miami-Dade County said they would vote for Trump. According to reporting from NBC, about 70 percent of Cuban-Americans in Florida voted for Trump.
The article also riled up dozens of users in a post to the Miami Reddit community. It garnered more than 70 comments on r/Miami before a moderator removed it less than 24 hours later.
“Documented or ‘legal’ Cubans in Florida do not want any other Cubans who they aren’t related to coming here and eventually earning the same status they have,” one Miami commenter opined. “Some twisted, narcissistic shit.”
“They get what their family members voted for,” wrote another.
“I do not enjoy someone else’s misfortune, but this is karma,” another user said.
According to the Times, the Trump administration has overseen a similar increase in deportations for other nationalities. “The difference is that Cubans had not previously been targeted as aggressively for removal,” Times reported. “Regular deportation flights to Cuba began in January 2017, under President Barack Obama, paused during the coronavirus pandemic and restarted in 2023.”
Trump has pretty much sealed any would-be Cuban immigrant’s chances of coming to the U.S. by banning certain visas from the country in June 2025 and ending a family reunification program in December 2025. The same month, Trump paused all Cuban immigration applications, “including pending naturalization, residency and asylum applications,” according to the Times.
“It’s the most sweeping rollback of Cuban migration channels since the Cold War,” María José Espinosa Carrillo, the executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, told the Times.
