ORLANDO, Fla. — For thirty years, Julio Varona has built a life in Central Florida, enjoying the special status allowed to Cuban immigrants even though the U.S. government had a standing order to deport him.

Only now, amid high-level talks and heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba, does his deportation seem likely to happen — and advocates worry thousands more Cuban immigrants may be forced to go too, despite deteriorating conditions on the island.

“I don’t know what is going to happen to me once I get there,” Varona said in Spanish.

Cuban immigrants in Florida, once among the most legally privileged in the U.S., may be forced to relinquish their unique protections and pushed to the forefront of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, lawyers and advocates say. Because of his criminal record, Varona could be forced into an early wave of deportees, but there is no reason to think the effort will stop there.

But amid the changes here, many in Central Florida’s Cuban community of more than 80,000 believe the communist government is at a “breaking point,” producing a mixture of dread and hope about the possibility of returning home. A U.S.-imposed oil blockade is putting increasing pressure on the island’s leadership, and offering a promise of the transformation in leadership many have longed to see.

“Change is coming,” said Mel Martinez, a Cuban American former U.S. senator and Orange County mayor who lives in Orlando. “It’s a brutal way to do it, by denying them fuel they need to run a country, but it’s the only way they seem to think about this in a way that makes sense.”

Varona, an opponent of the island’s communist government, filed onto a makeshift raft alongside a handful of others in the 1990s, risking his life and sailing across the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to reinvent his life in Florida. He arrived amid the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” federal policies at the time, which allowed Cubans — uniquely among all migrants — legal status in the U.S. upon stepping onto American soil.

His journey was similar to that of many other Cubans.

Martinez left Cuba alone at the age of 16 in 1962 before reuniting with his parents in Orlando, arriving under then-President Lyndon Johnson’s policy to welcome Cubans fleeing the Castro regime.

Johnson signed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966, a landmark federal law that allowed Cubans in the U.S. for at least one year to apply for a green card. The act still applies today for certain Cubans, but in 2022, following a court decision, the Department of Homeland Security began to hamper recent Cuban arrivals’ ability to qualify.

Now, Martinez said, “That situation has changed pretty dramatically, and now it’s not easy to come and impossible to enter the U.S. Even more concerning than that is any deportations that might be sending people back to Cuba.”

The court case and the DHS decision signaled a changing tide for Cuban immigrants, said Juan Carlos Gomez, an immigration lawyer and law professor at Florida International University and part of the university’s Cuban Research Institute.

“It wasn’t so much that Cubans were privileged, it was more that there was a quirk in the diplomatic, political and historical situation,” Gomez said. “It’s a different world now.“

Last month the Department of Homeland Security announced 170 Cubans with criminal records had been sent back, marking the first deportations of the year to an island that historically has rejected such deportees. As the situation has evolved, though, the island has become more open to their return.

Varona will likely be on one of those flights next month. In 2000, he was sentenced to 10 years of probation for sexual battery of a minor, but the judge withheld adjudication, meaning he was not formally convicted. He had pleaded not guilty at the time and maintains his innocence now, but in 2001 an immigration judge ordered his removal.

He was released from ICE custody a few months later and checked in with the agency annually, but was never deported in part because Cuba would not take him. Finally in December, following his regular check-in with ICE in Orlando, Varona left the office with an ankle monitor tracking his movement and was told to prepare for deportation in April.

“I try not to tell my mother about any of this, because she’s 82 and she’s already worried about me going back,” Varona said. “I don’t want to give her a heart attack.”

The island he would return to is different than the one he left over two decades ago. Its population of roughly 10 million is reeling from nationwide blackouts, a financial crisis, food and medicine shortages and garbage pileups amid the U.S.-imposed oil blockade.

The New York Times reported the Trump administration is pushing to depose current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is largely seen as a figurehead, while continuing to work with the communist government — leaving it unclear whether the plight of Cuban immigrants to the U.S. would be better or worse.

Gomez said a change in leadership of Cuba could trigger the sunsetting of the policies so many Cuban immigrants rely on. They might be forced to navigate the complex immigration system that leaves many in limbo due to rapidly changing policies, enduring the uncertainty faced by Venezuelan or Haitian immigrants whose temporary protected status was suddenly revoked.

Ana Sofia Pelaez, the executive director of the Miami Freedom Project, said she’s concerned about Cubans who protested the government during a historic movement in 2021 and who sought refuge in the U.S. will be forced to return to essentially the same government.

One of those Cubans, Pedro Yusbel Gonzalez Guerra, journeyed to the U.S. on a wooden boat three years ago in the wake of the Cuban government’s suppression of those protests. He was one of more than 100 immigrants who had appointments at the ICE office in Orlando on just one day in December. Hours after his appointment, he had still not come out of the building. All attempts to contact him since have been unsuccessful.

“To have a performative change in government without a meaningful change or ... a path to reform is not what we’ve been advocating for all these years,” Pelaez said. “If there’s a continuing crisis in Cuba that triggers a migration crisis, there’s no adequate response for us to receive them in the U.S.”

Bertica Cabrera Morris fled Cuba in the 1960s when she was in high school. Her father was arrested after the Cuban government accused him of conspiring to help the Americans and held him in a freezer, she said. Her family fled soon after and eventually settled in Orlando after spending a few years in Spain. Today she runs her own successful consulting firm.

“I don’t think we had preferential treatment ,” Cabrera Morris said. “People that had a different view of what immigration was about, and we came here because we didn’t have a choice.”

Cubans have been able to deeply integrate themselves into American culture due to the unique, longstanding political history of the U.S. and Cuba, a characteristic not shared by more recent immigrant groups, she said.

“I never knew I was Hispanic until somebody told me,” Cabrera Morris said. “I always felt welcomed in this community.”

Federal policies allowing Cuban immigrants the right to work in the U.S. has propelled them into success, a process Pelaez said should be replicated for other immigrant groups too.

“Cuban Americans received the benefit of programs and then showed what they can do given that support,” Pelaez said. “Cubans make a great case for why a sensible, humane immigration process is valuable and should be extended to more nationalities.”

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