The Cuban Journalist Trapped in America’s Immigration Blockade

lmost six months after he fled Cuba, José Luis Tan Estrada arrived in Mexico in May with two pairs of shorts, two pullovers, and one and a half pairs of boxers. Most importantly, he says, he made it “with my soul and my dignity intact.”

A journalist and professor from Camagüey, in central Cuba, Tan Estrada, who is twenty-nine years old, left his country in late December, two years after getting fired from his job at the University of Camagüey. His firing in 2022 came after months of government intimidation of Tan Estrada over his encouragement of students’ questioning government policies. (“I loved teaching journalism and communication,” Tan Estrada said. “I had students with diverse opinions and backgrounds.”) In April 2024, he spent a week in detention in Havana’s dreaded Villa Marista state security headquarters.