Without a country to take him, Cuban immigrant spends month in limbo inside Wyoming jail

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Josue Rodriguez Perez joined the line outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office near Miami for his annual check-in on June 5.

Three months later, the Cuban national found himself languishing in the Natrona County Detention Center, 2,000 miles from home, increasingly hopeless as his detention felt increasingly endless. 

“You want to die. You pray to God you don’t wake up in the morning, when you’re isolated like this,” Rodriguez told WyoFile over a set of phone interviews from inside the jail. 

Rodriguez’s journey from the Florida coast to the middle of Wyoming is a result of complicated immigration law that made him vulnerable to the mass deportations pursued by President Donald Trump and his administration. While some communities around the country are resisting, Rodriguez’s time in Casper shows how some sheriffs are willing to place their jails in service of the president’s agenda. 

In 1993, Rodriguez and his father fled Cuba, where an authoritarian government squashes independent political activity, tightly controls the press and limits freedom of speech. They were granted legal U.S. residency. But in 2012, felony convictions for credit card fraud sent Rodriguez to a Louisiana state prison for five years. It’s a period in which he says he found religion, found himself and emerged to build a new life. But the crime cost Rodriguez his green card, and a judge ordered his deportation.

Cuba, however, with its fraught history with the United States, does not accept many deportees. So Rodriguez stayed, working legally, for eight more years. He built a family in Florida and a career as a commercial truck driver. 

Each year, he went to visit ICE and renew the work permit issued to people in his particular situation. But this year, agents detained Rodriguez and more than a dozen other Cubans standing in line with him. 

Under Trump, ICE is trying to deport people whose home country won’t take them to a third country — regardless of whether the person has ties there or, in many cases, even a guarantee of safety. The administration is also seeking third countries when a judge has ruled a migrant can’t be sent to their home country because they’ll face torture or persecution. 

In Rodriguez’s case, ICE appears to have detained him without a plan for what to do with him — or at least without one that held up.

Federal agents shuffled Rodriguez from one place to another. Over the course of roughly six weeks, he was held in detention centers in Miami, El Paso; another place in Texas he can’t quite remember the name of; then Aurora, Colorado; then back to El Paso and then back to Aurora, according to an accounting by him and a sister he was able to check in with via intermittent phone calls. 

WyoFile asked ICE why the agency detained Rodriguez without a clear plan for his deportation. “They are criminal illegal aliens,” an ICE spokesperson wrote in response. “President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem are reversing the previous administration’s policies that allowed millions of illegal aliens to remain in the United States consequence free.”

Rodriguez made each trip, on both plane and bus, shackled by his wrists and ankles. He stayed in crowded cell blocks, he said, where he could rarely shower. He sometimes slept on the floor and used a toilet in view of others. 

His account aligns with how ICE increasingly is treating the immigrants it detains, two attorneys told WyoFile. 

“We’re seeing people moved around so much they lose track of what day it is … they don’t know time and place,” Laura Lunn, of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, told WyoFile. “People [end up] detained in Aurora, Colorado, and don’t know there’s a giant mountain range outside their front door.” 

On July 18, Rodriguez and 45 other migrants of various nationalities were transferred from Aurora to the Natrona County Detention Center in Casper. 

WyoFile asked ICE about Rodriguez’s case on Wednesday and asked the agency’s media office to respond by Friday afternoon. On Thursday evening, after holding Rodriguez in the Natrona County jail for 40 days, he and six other ICE detainees in the Casper jail were transferred out of the jail, according to inmate rosters. ICE’s detainee tracker indicates Rodriguez was taken to Aurora for a third time.

It’s unclear what prompted the latest move – ICE declined to comment on why Rodriguez was pulled back to that facility.

According to Lunn and other immigration attorneys interviewed by WyoFile, Rodriguez’s case — with no ongoing court proceedings or clear end to his confinement — is typical of the detainees they’ve seen transferred to county jails like Casper’s, though the number of detainees with legal representation at all is slim. In a federal case for a different ICE detainee, agency officials testified that they were sending people with “inactive” cases to Natrona County, to maintain room in Aurora for people who had pending court hearings. 

The detainees’ confinement in Casper raises the question of whether jails could become de facto immigration prisons, as temporary holds drag into lengthy stays. Thirty people who entered the facility with Rodriguez on July 18 remain incarcerated there, according to Friday morning’s inmate roster. 

Other immigrants in the Casper jail told Rodriguez they had successfully appealed their cases, which prevented deportation to their home countries, he said. But once released, ICE officers arrested them again, so the agency could try to deport them to a third country. 

Rodriguez is no longer fighting his deportation. He wants to be sent to México, though he doesn’t have family there or ties to the country. “With Trump, they can do whatever they feel like,” he said. “I don’t want to be in this country anymore, and they’re keeping me here.”

Life in limbo

In Casper, Rodriguez did not see sunlight for 40 days, he said. He spent the majority of each day locked down in his cell, he said.

While inmates receive different classifications, the minimum time out of the cell is five hours a day, according to a sheriff’s spokesperson. 

Sheriff’s deputies are monitoring ICE detainees and the lengths of their stay, Natrona County sheriff’s spokesperson Kiera Hett told WyoFile in an email. “We always keep a watchful eye,” she wrote. “These detainees have been processed through immigration courts and have been ordered to be detained.” 

She did not respond to a question about whether the sheriff had a limit for how long he would keep ICE detainees in his jail. WyoFile has requested interviews with Sheriff John Harlin to discuss the ICE detainees but has not received one. 

Rodriguez says the courts ordered him deported, not imprisoned. 

The detainees in Casper tie Wyoming to a nationwide detention system that critics say is putting due process — and the basic humanity of immigrants — into question, even as the Trump administration works to scale up detention and deportation even further. Flush with a $75 billion budget expansion, the administration hopes to expand its capacity in county jails, including in Wyoming, The Washington Post reported this month. 

But México isn’t the only possible destination for Rodriguez and other immigrants in similar positions. There are scarier possibilities afoot for Latino immigrants.  

With the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Trump administration has been pursuing deportations to African countries including Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda, where Rodriguez worries he would be imprisoned or worse. The U.S. State Department, for example, warns American travelers away from Sudan, citing kidnapping and armed conflict. 

In Florida, Rodriguez’s wife, two daughters and sister worry for him and struggle with the loss of his presence and income in their lives. Rodriguez is growing increasingly desperate and depressed, his sister told WyoFile. Rodriguez himself told WyoFile he was considering a hunger strike. 

Earlier in his confinement, Rodriguez says he signed paperwork allowing his deportation to México. ICE shackled him and bused him to El Paso, he said. 

Rodriguez sat in limbo in a detention center on the border. He saw crying women, separated from their families, and tent facilities swelled by detainees, he said. “It’s bad,” he told WyoFile. “I can’t compare it with anything because I’ve never been through something like that.” 

Eight days after arriving in El Paso, Rodriguez was taken back to Aurora and then to Casper. He never got an answer as to why he couldn’t enter México. He was also never told what ICE might try next. Instead, he spent 40 days in a Wyoming jail cell. 

“He already did his years in prison,” sister Monika Rodriguez said, “so he doesn’t need to do more years in prison. If he needs deportation, OK, go ahead. Deportation.”

Prison and redemption

Rodriguez was 16 years old when his father brought him and Monika to Miami to escape Fidel Castro’s communist government. Today, he is 52 and has two daughters of his own. They’re 33 and 28 years old, he told WyoFile. 

He once had a third daughter. 

In 2005, he was driving his family from Naples, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, across the state to Miami to board a cruise ship. Rodriguez lost control of the vehicle. His first wife, his daughter and his niece died in the resulting crash. Rodriguez was cleared of any legal wrongdoing, he said, but those official inquiries couldn’t clear him of his own guilt.

He used cocaine and drank and committed credit card fraud to pay for it. “I was running from the guilt,” he said. He went to prison once in Florida, and then again in Louisiana — that time for five years. Court records in both states support Rodriguez’s account of the charges. His sister, interviewed by WyoFile separately, also described the accident. 

In the Louisiana prison, Rodriguez’s life changed, he said. He connected with a priest and learned to forgive himself for the fatal crash. He earned a GED, worked as a caretaker for elderly inmates, played football and boxed. “I felt free, inside the prison, believe it or not,” he told WyoFile. “It was beautiful.” 

Indeed, Rodriguez came home changed, Monika said. “It was difficult at the beginning, trying to put his life back together, but he did it,” she said. “He put his life back in line.” He started doing lawn care, she remembered, building patios, and then got into commercial driving and financed his own semitruck. 

He remarried and supported his surviving daughters. WyoFile found no record of additional convictions for Rodriguez after his release from prison in 2017. WyoFile asked ICE if the agency had any additional record of criminality, and officials did not provide a direct answer.

“Eight years of being good,” Monika said.

Then came Trump’s reelection in November. 

Then came Rodriguez’s ICE check-in on June 5. 

Swept back in

The Cubans standing in line that day did not leave home knowing they would be suddenly swept into the immigration detention system and separated from their families, Javier Falcon, another immigrant arrested that day, told WyoFile. 

Had he known, Falcon would’ve said a very different goodbye to his family, he said. Rodriguez too. 

Falcon spoke to WyoFile by phone from México, where the government deported him, though he is also Cuban.

After their arrest, the men were taken to the Krome North Service Processing Center, an ICE facility in Miami. There, both men said, they slept on the floor of a cell that was designed to hold 25 people, but was holding 60 or 70. During the days the Cubans were in Krome, National Public Radio reported on overcrowding and a lack of food at the facilities. 

Falcon and Rodriguez bonded amid the brutal conditions, they said. “We developed a very strong friendship,” Falcon said. 

Both men were sent to Texas. But they were separated. On July 12, ICE agents took Falcon across the border and handed him to Mexican authorities. Not knowing where to go, he made his way to Cancún, hearing it was safe and stable. 

Falcon has no friends or family in México, he said, and so far, no work. He has not seen his wife since June. His voice choked with emotion as he discussed his predicament. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. 

But both men agree: Of the two, Falcon is the luckier one. 

Rodriguez called his friend in México from the Casper jail. Like Rodriguez’s relatives, Falcon worried the confined man was growing more desperate there.

“I give him strength, I give him encouragement,” Falcon said. “I can’t do anything else.” 

Pining for the unthinkable

Four hours south of Casper, Aurora’s detention center is managed by a sprawling for-profit prison company (and significant donor to Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign) called GEO Group. Detainees and attorneys have repeatedly accused the company of maintaining poor conditions there through insufficient health care, overcrowding and other allegations. 

But while still in Casper, Rodriguez longed for the Aurora facility. There is an outdoor area where inmates could feel the sun and breathe fresh air each day. And there is more time to socialize outside their cells, he recalled. 

The notion of missing Aurora is worrying and yet understandable to Elizabeth Jordan, director of the Immigration Law & Policy Clinic at the University of Denver. 

“Aurora is a deeply, deeply problematic place but at least there’s a psychologist on staff and a yard where people can play soccer,” she said.  

Jails are not built for long stays — they’re built, usually on the local taxpayer’s dime, to hold people arrested on suspicion of crimes until their case can be adjudicated or to serve short sentences. If found guilty of felonies, Wyoming criminals are moved to a state prison, where there are facilities to ensure a level of physical and mental well-being as people serve out longer sentences.

Prolonged stays in jail, coupled with mental health issues or less access to health care, can lead to depression and in the worst cases, suicide — a problem that has plagued Wyoming jails at high rates. There’s a legal risk for Wyoming counties that go down the fraught route of holding people for ICE, Jordan said. Though Natrona County has an agreement with ICE to hold detainees, the local government remains liable for their well-being while they hold them.

Ultimately, a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case found that the government can not keep immigration detainees confined indefinitely. If, after six months in detention, the government can’t show it’s likely to deport the detainee, the justices ruled, they should be released. But the federal government won’t necessarily just kick Rodriguez loose if he hits that threshold, said Jordan, the immigration clinic director. 

“ICE’s practices have always been fairly chaotic, and right now, with the high-pressure agenda, they’ve gotten more chaotic,” she said. 

Even if Rodriguez gets released, ICE could choose to detain him and try deportation again if they think they’ve found a destination. “It’s pretty precarious,” Jordan said. 

As for Rodriguez, he mourned not just for himself, but for the United States. “It’s not the same country, it’s not the same freedom that I used to know,” he said. “I feel a lot for this country. This is home.” 

Or at least it was. Now, he’s ready to leave — if he can just get free of confinement and reach a place that will offer him a chance to rebuild again.