STAYING SAFE

Fearful Gloria Estefan Keeps Passport With Her

She says Trump’s ICE Crackdown is like Castro’s Cuba.

Four-time Grammy Award winner Gloria Estefan says some things in Donald Trump’s America are now just like Fidel Castro’s Cuba. The “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” icon said she knows people who have been “taken away” as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient even said she carries her passport with her just in case she runs into any trouble of her own. The 68-year-old “Conga” singer told The Times, “I have lived in the U.S. for 66 years—never have I seen freedoms being eroded in the way they are now.” She said, “I know people who are in the country legally and have been taken away.” One “had been in the U.S. for 25 years, came in with a visa, paid taxes. In her last appointment at immigration, she got carried away and has been at a detention center for five months.” Estefan, who fled from Castro’s Cuba more than six decades ago, said: “I carry my passport card around just in case, because who knows what can happen. I was born in Cuba—that’s why we’re so wary of what’s happening, because this is the way things happened there... When we’re out with the family, it’s very natural to speak Spanish.”