A Trump-voting man in Florida said he will never vote Republican again after his Cuban fiancée was caught up in the administration’s ICE raids.
Wayne DeMario, a small business owner in Miami-Dade County, started a GoFundMe in July of last year to pay for legal fees after his partner of 20 years was detained.
Yamile Alcantu, who came to the country legally from Cuba 25 years ago through the visa lottery system, was checking in with ICE, as she had done annually for years prior, when she was “kidnapped,” her partner says.
“They grabbed her, put her in shackles and chains,” DeMario told Local10 News. After police found three Xanax pills on her during a traffic stop in 2008, Alcantu received a deportation order.
She has kept in regular contact with immigration authorities in an effort to fix her immigration status ever since. Until last year, that had never been an issue.
The couple did not believe that her nearly 20-year-old deportation order would be a problem when they voted for Trump in the 2024 election.
“I really thought this was just going to be something more organized, but it’s obviously not,” DeMario said. “They just blanket everybody.”
“I didn’t vote for this, but I definitely voted Republican.”
Local10 News also reported that Alcantu has other criminal misdemeanors on her record from the early 2000s. The Department of Homeland Security, however, has her listed as “the worst of the worst,” charged with “dangerous drugs and drug possession.”
Now, however, DeMario has said that he regrets his decision and that he has never been a die-hard MAGA fan.
“I am no Trump supporter,” DeMario wrote on his public Facebook account. “I vote Republican. And I will never f---ing vote Republican again.”
“I am pissed at this whole administration, and all of government... I voted Republican, but so did millions of other people, and what was the alternative? But this guy is a real POS.”
“I’m sorry I voted for that a-hole. If people can’t accept my apology, f--- them,” he said. “And it’s not about my life anyway, it’s about hers.”
“Help me get Yami home or go away... It’s not about right or left. It’s about right and wrong.”
During the campaign, Trump promised to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” telling voters during a rally in April 2024 that immigrants are “not humans, they’re animals.”
Since then, he has supercharged ICE operations with an additional $75 billion in funding and deployed federal agents in mainly Democrat-run states. Two American citizens were shot dead in Minnesota while protesting the operations in January.
The administration has claimed that nearly 3 million illegal migrants left the U.S. in 2025, although independent analysis suggests that is a “self-serving fantasy” and that the true figure is likely significantly lower.
Florida itself has been engaged in a partnership with ICE for the past 10 months in what they have termed “Operation Tidal Wave.” The immigration push has reportedly seen more than 10,000 individuals in the state arrested.
“This is the largest joint immigration enforcement operation in ICE’s history, and we’re proud that it will continue here in Florida,” Governor Ron DeSantis said.
Alcantu was being held in an ICE detention center in Jacksonville before being moved to Louisiana. She has yet to see an immigration judge, DeMario says, and has to be kept supplied with necessities while she is there.
“I even have to supply her with food and tampons,” DeMario wrote on his GoFundMe. “Clean clothes, I also pay for her to have a tablet so she can communicate with her family, communicate with me.”
“They charge us for everything. It’s like a giant money pit for them.”
He has said he fears the administration will deport her to Cuba, a country from which she migrated with her entire family.
The Trump administration is currently engaged in a campaign of regime change against the communist island nation following its decapitation of the Venezuelan Maduro regime in December.
“Cuba will be failing pretty soon. Cuba is really a nation that’s very close to failing,” Trump said in January.
The Department of Homeland Security has recently announced the deportation of 170 “criminals” to Cuba, something the Caribbean government there has traditionally rejected.
The nation had its oil supplies effectively cut off after the Trump administration blocked shipments leaving Venezuela and threatened tariffs on any country that supplied oil to Havana. A widespread humanitarian crisis has emerged as a result, with surgeries on hold and garbage removal suspended.
For DeMario, he continues to work overtime at his guitar store, Wayne’s Guitar World, having spent his “life savings” on working to free his partner.
“She is my fiancée. She is the love of my life. She is my best friend we live together and I want to continue living with her for the rest of our lives,” he wrote. “We need your help to keep Yyami and get her back home safely.”
The Daily Beast has contacted DeMario for comment.
