(GoFundMe/Wayne DeMario/GoFundMe/Wayne DeMario)
A Florida small business owner who once supported Donald Trump is making an emotional plea to the president after his fiancée of 20 years was taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and faces possible deportation to Cuba.
Through tears in a public appeal, Wayne DeMario begged Trump to bring Yamile Alcantu back home, saying, “Please get her home! Please, she does not deserve this. She is the sweetest person, and she prayed for you.”
Alcantu, a Cuban national who has lived in the United States for 25 years, was detained by ICE last June during a routine check-in at the immigration office—something she had done annually for years without issue.
DeMario, who owns Wayne’s Guitar World in Miami-Dade County, described the moment she was taken. “They grabbed her, put her in shackles and chains,” he said, adding that she was first held at a detention centre in Jacksonville before being transferred to Louisiana.
The couple thought Alcantu’s immigration status wouldn’t be a problem. She originally moved to the U.S. through the Visa Lottery program and had complied with check-ins with authorities every year.
DeMario said the detention stemmed from an old traffic stop in 2008, when officers searched Alcantu’s purse and found three Xanax pills. The encounter resulted in a deportation order, despite there being no recent criminal issues.
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After she fell ill, Alcantu was hospitalised for three days, and medical tests later confirmed the presence of tranquillisers in her system, according to DeMario. Upon release, she went straight to a police station to report her own detention.
The case has weighed heavily on DeMario, who said he and Alcantu were staunch Trump supporters and never expected to find themselves in this situation. “I really thought this was just going to be something more organised, but it’s obviously not,” he said of the president’s deportation policies. “They just blanket everybody.”
Alcantu and DeMario fear she could be sent back to Cuba, which is currently experiencing economic hardship and shortages following disruptions to oil imports from Venezuela.
The couple live together in Palma and share a young son. With Alcantu detained, DeMario is struggling to cover legal fees and detention costs. On his GoFundMe page, he wrote: “She is my fiancé. She is the love of my life. She is my best friend… We live together, and I want to continue living with her for the rest of our lives.”
The situation highlights the human impact of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, which has intensified deportation efforts nationwide, leaving long-established residents caught up in sweeping crackdowns.
