‘Like we were dogs’For Scull Delgado, life in the US began with the famous Mariel boatlift, a 1980 exodus that saw some 125,000 Cubans pile onto small, rickety boats and sail across the Florida Strait.Many were fleeing political persecution. Others had grown desperate as a result of the island’s economic strife. Scull Delgado said he joined the boatlift to escape service in Cuba’s army.But even though the “marielitos” arrived in the US without formal paperwork, Washington agreed to accept them. The US, after all, had long opposed the island’s communist leadership.”We will continue to provide an open heart and open arms to refugees seeking freedom from communist domination and from economic deprivation,” US President Jimmy Carter said at the time.Over the following decades, Scull Delgado settled in California and got married to a US citizen. He had three children and four grandchildren. But he also got a criminal record.”I committed a crime in the ’90s,” he said, describing it as “a slip-up” for which he did time in prison.”After I got out, I didn’t get into any more problems,” Scull Delgado added. He just had to “show up every year to sign in” at US immigration offices. “That’s where they picked me up.”Immigration agents arrested him while he was signing in at …
