(Photo by Postand Courier)
For more than a decade, Daylin Silber worked as a Spanish-English court interpreter in South Carolina, watching immigrants taken into ICE custody during routine hearings. At night, she waited for collect calls from her brother, Rolando Torricella De La Portil, who was being held in detention facilities across the country.
Daylin and Rolando fled Cuba as children and were granted permanent U.S. residency. Now in her 50s, Daylin has built her life in South Carolina alongside dozens of relatives. But in November, Rolando was detained during a routine immigration check-in in Miami. After months in custody, he was deported to Mexico on Feb. 7.
“We voted for this guy. We all voted, every single one of us,” Daylin said of President Donald Trump. “But we never expected something like this to happen. It’s just inhumane. It’s inhumane, and it’s wrong. And I think most people who voted for him did not expect this, and a lot of them don’t even know this is happening.”
Rolando had served three years in federal prison in the early 2000s for conspiracy to import cocaine. After his release, he was placed on an “Order of Supervision,” allowing him to live and work legally while checking in annually with immigration authorities. For two decades, he maintained a clean record.
His wife, Susan, said he followed every rule. “They’re saying, ‘Great, he’s getting rid of the riff raff. These people never should have come here. They need to go back and come back the right way,’” she said. “My husband did come here the right way. He was doing everything legally.”
“In the beginning, Trump said he’s going to take the worst of the worst. So tell me how my husband, who hasn’t done anything in so many years and worked for the county, who has everything legal except for one little paper, how is that the worst of the worst?” she added.
Family friend Eddy Acosta, who had a similar conviction decades ago, was also detained during a routine check-in and deported to Mexico after four months in custody. He described overcrowded cells and constant transfers. “They had us in a holding cell that was for 25 people, and there were 59 of us in that room,” Eddy said.
“It looked like it was a slaughterhouse, and they’re just getting prepared to kill us all.” After being moved between facilities, Rolando was sent to a detention centre nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where he said, “I felt like a pig in a cage.”
Both men ultimately agreed to deportation after months in detention. Now in Mexico, they are trying to rebuild. “I don’t want to go back to Cuba, it would be like dropping me off at Mars, you know? And so is Mexico,” Rolando said. “This third country thing, I think it’s really cruel. I’m not from here, I don’t know anything.”
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