Alain (a pseudonym), 47, came to the United States from Cuba by plane and lived about five years in Las Vegas, where he worked as a casino dealer. He was in the process of getting legal status through his wife, a U.S. citizen, when she died in November 2025. After about five days in county jail for driving with a suspended license, he was picked up by immigration, held about five more days and removed to Mexico in November 2025. He says he never saw a judge, signed nothing and was not told where he was going. "I wasn't fighting the case. They just deported me," he said. "I don't know much, because they put me on a plane and took me off." He walks with a walker after a car accident injured his spine. "When I said to the doctor, 'I have a problem, I can't walk,' they told me, 'Oh, you'll walk by yourself one day.'" He spent months on the street in Palenque, Chiapas, which he calls very hard, then about five months in a shelter, with no work while he waits on a refugee claim. HUMSI interviewed him in Palenque in September 2026.