Immigration arrests of Cubans living in the United States have skyrocketed even as green-card approvals have plummeted under President Donald Trump’s immigration policies,according to a recently released analysis from a libertarian Washington think tank.

A Cato Institute report published last week found that overall the Trump administration has “nearly ended green card approvals for Cubans,” while it targets Cubans under its mass deportation agenda for arrest, detention and deportation.

In October 2024, months before Trump took office, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved over 10,000 Cubans for lawful permanent residency. But the numbers steadily declined after Trump took office and fell to just dozens by the end last year. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of Cubans went up from less than 200 per month in late 2024 to more than 1,000 per month by late 2025.

Since December 2024, green card approvals for Cubans have fallen 99.8% and ICE arrests of people from the island have risen by 463%, according to the Cato analysis. In January, the government received 7,086 applications for residency, but only 15 Cubans became permanent residents, four were denied and thousands of other applications are on pause. Meanwhile, ICE detained over 1,000 immigrants from the island. The freeze has created a legal limbo that Cubans, long privileged in the U.S. immigration system, have never faced before.

The explosion in arrests and nosedive in green card approvals are taking place in the backdrop of a slew of policies aimed at making it hard for Cuban immigrants to enter the country or permanently stay in the United States. The shift in policies has affected many who live in South Florida, the heart of the Cuban community in the United States.

The Trump administration’s immigration policies have aggressively targeted Cubans, among the president’s staunchest supporters. His administration has frozen the processing of green cards, asylum applications, naturalization applications and work permits for Cuban nationals and people from several other countries. It also ended a Biden-era program that allowed Cubans to live and work in the United States for two years as long as they had sponsors and passed background checks, leaving Cubans without an immigration parole permit.

READ MORE: Million-plus immigration-benefits applications from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela frozen

That freeze has impacted nearly one million Cubans, according to a separate Cato analysis. It has also cut them off from their long-established fast track under a law known as the Cuban Adjustment Act. The 1960s federal legislation allows Cubans to apply for permanent residency a year and a day after arriving in the United States.

“This is a dramatic curtailing of immigration from Cuba,” David Bier, director of Immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told the Miami Herald.

Rosa, who asked not to be identified by her full name for fear of retaliation, is among the Cubans living in South Florida waiting to hear back about her green-card application.

Source: Drudge Report