Nobody Wants These People

This chapter chronicles events surrounding the 1980 Mariel Cuban boatlift, expressions of US public xenophobia, and Carter and Reagan administration responses. It details experiences of Cubans held on US military bases including Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, daily refugee camp life, and how acts of refugee resistance and the criminalization of Mariel Cubans in US and Cuban media informed detention policy. A section of the chapter focuses on media attention and public debate surrounding queer and trans Mariel Cubans, and advocacy on their behalf. After the Reagan administration came into office in 1981, it announced a more punitive policy of detaining asylum-seekers with an overall intent to deter migration. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how the arrival and perceived mismanagement of Mariel Cubans led to the US government’s indefinite detention of thousands of Mariel Cubans throughout the decade and became a central motivation in the Reagan administration’s launching of the War on Drugs in 1982.