Stuck in Casper Jail, Cuban Immigrant Left in Legal Limbo

What started as a routine check-in with US immigration authorities in Miami turned into a nightmare for 52-year-old Josue Rodriguez Perez — one that landed him in a Casper jail cell for 40 days, with no clear end in sight, Oil City News reports.

Rodriguez fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba with his father in 1993 and was granted legal residency. But a fraud conviction years later cost him his green card and left him with a deportation order. Cuba rarely accepts deportees, so he stayed in Florida, legally working as a truck driver and raising a family. For years, his annual ICE check-ins were uneventful — until this June, when agents suddenly detained him and more than a dozen other Cuban immigrants.

From there, Rodriguez was shuttled across the country — Miami, Texas, Colorado, back to Texas, then Colorado again — shackled on planes and buses, before ending up in the Natrona County Detention Center in Casper. ICE, meanwhile, had no clear destination for him.

“You want to die. You pray to God you don’t wake up in the morning, when you’re isolated like this,” Rodriguez said in a phone interview from jail.

His case highlights a chaotic immigration system in overdrive under the Trump administration, which is pushing to deport people even when their home countries refuse to take them back. Sometimes, officials try to send migrants to “third countries” they’ve never lived in — a move attorneys say puts lives at risk.

In Casper, Rodriguez said he didn’t see sunlight for 40 days. Other immigrants detained alongside him told similar stories of winning appeals against deportation, only to be rearrested so ICE could try to ship them somewhere else. Advocates warn that local jails like Natrona County’s are becoming de facto immigration prisons — facilities never designed for long-term detention.

Rodriguez has asked to be deported to Mexico, even though he has no ties there. But ICE hasn’t granted that request, and he remains in limbo.

“I don’t want to be in this country anymore, and they’re keeping me here,” he said.

His family in Florida — a wife, two daughters, and his sister Monika — are left waiting and worrying.

“He already did his years in prison,” Monika said. “If he needs deportation, OK, go ahead. Deportation. But not more prison.”

For Rodriguez, who once embraced America as home, the hardest part is the disillusionment.

“It’s not the same country, it’s not the same freedom that I used to know,” he said. “I feel a lot for this country. This is home. Or at least it was.”